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THE 



PILLOW OF STONES 



DIVINE ALLEGORIES IN THEIR 
SPIRITUAL MEANING. 



BY THE 

REV. FRANK SEWALL. 



Which things are an allegory." — Gal. iv. 24. 



PHILADELPHIA.* 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

LONDON: 16 SOUTHAMPTON ST., COVENT GARDEN. 

1876. 






i%'\' 1 
.S*** 



$ IS ~ v?S 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT. 



SPIRITUAL LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF OUR LORD. 



COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 



£?-£> 



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v&r-^; 



TO 

CHARLES HENRY AND MARY ALLEN 

Affectionately Dedicated. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. — The Pillow of Stones; or, How to Obtain a 

Trust in the Divine Providence ... 7 

II.— The Temptation of Eve; or, The Beguilements 

of the Sensual Man 23 

III. — Noah's Dove ; or, The Soul set Free . . -45 

IV.— Melchizedek's Oblation; or, The Sacrament of 

the Supper of the Lord 64 

V. — Abraham and Sarah in the Land of Abime- 
lech ; or, The Divine Adaptations of Truth 
to Men 82 

VI. — Hagar's Return to her Mistress; or, The Sub- 
mission of the Rational 107 

VII. — Ishmael Restored to Life; or, The Spiritual 

Reason . . . 125 

VIII.— The Eternal Lamp; or, How Faith is to be 

Preserved 144 

IX. — The Altar of Incense; or, The Faculty of 

Worshiping God 160 

1* 5 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

X. — The Shepiikrd-Boy made King; or, The Lord's 

Choice versus Man's Choice . . . .176 

XL — The Armor-Bearer made Harp-Player; cr, The 

Divine Truth protecting against Evil Spirits 194 

XII. — The Money in the Sack ; or, How the Truth 

makes Free 210 



THE PILLOW OF STONES 



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And he took of the stones of that place, and put them fot 
his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.— -Gen. 
xxviii. ii. — 

OUR Lord, when He was on earth as the 
Son of Man, "had not a place where to 
lay his head." Jacob of old, when he jour- 
neyed away from his fathers house, lay his 
head, when night came, upon a pillow of stones. 
In the divine words of Scripture, "Jacob went 
out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. 
And he lighted upon a certain place, and tar- 
ried there all night, because the sun was set; 
and he took of the stones of that place, and 

(7) 



THE PILLOW OF STONES. 



put them for his pillows, and lay down in that 
place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold 
a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it 
reached to heaven: and behold the angels of 
God ascending and descending on it. And, 
behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am 
the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the 
God of Isaac : the land whereon thou liest, to 
thee will I give it, and to thy seed." 

Jacob was a man like ourselves, journeying 
on his earthly road. What occurred to him 
was a token that we are all here in some way 
connected with heaven and with the angels 
and with the Lord. The Lord was watching 
over Jacob, and, as he slept upon his hard bed, 
the angels were seen by him ascending and 
descending above him. What is here related 
of Jacob as a visible and external event, is 
truly taking place with all men, more or less, 
not in a visible and external way, but in a hid- 
den spiritual way, in the course of their jour- 
neying from a natural to a heavenly state of 



THE PILLOW OF STONES. 



life. Since God's Word is true, and since it 
tells us of the spiritual life, the life of the soul, 
it must be that in some hidden, unconscious, 
spiritual way, we who live and toil, who believe 
and doubt, who pray and trust, who are now 
anxious and fearful, and now at peace and 
filled with thankfulness and rest, — that we, in 
this day, are making our journey from a place, 
a state of life, in which we have been, to one 
before us yet unknown. There comes for us a 
"going down of the sun," the time of night 
and the time of rest. We, too, must find our 
pillow; and if it be such a pillow for us spirit- 
ually as was Jacob's naturally, we shall see 
the ladder reaching to heaven, and over us 
will ascend and descend the angels of God. 

Jacob, in this divine narrative, stands for a 
large class of men, — those, namely, who know 
a little truth in an outward way — some few 
facts of religion and faith, and who are in the 
effort on the whole to live according to what 
they know. May we not take Jacob as the 

A* 



IO THE PILLOW OF STONES. 

representative of the vast majority of religious 
people in the world at this day? Natural 
men, we may say, because they think but little 
and know but little consciously about spiritual 
things as such. Their life and affections are 
chiefly in natural and external things. But a 
man's life and love may be in outward things, 
— of his family, or his business or his life in the 
world, — and yet may he be a good man. Every- 
thing depends on whether he remembers God 
or not in his daily life, and tries, in the life that 
he leads, and that he loves, to keep God's 
commandments. If he does this, even though 
his knowledge of divine and interior things be 
not extensive, and his life as yet a natural 
life, — that is, a life consisting chiefly in willing 
and thinking and working in the outward con- 
cerns of the body and the world, — yet, if he 
keep sacredly and religiously in mind the few 
plain precepts of his religion which he has 
learned, and tries to let these control his life, he 
is then such a man as Jacob represents, a man 



THE PILLOW OF STONES. II 

who is in a good life from the truth residing in 
his natural mind. A man may read a very few 
books, and forget what litrie he reads in them, 
but if he reads one book, — that of God's own 
Word, — and remembers a few plain precepts 
of this book, those plain commandments which 
are the laws of eternal life, of which our God 
says, "This do and thou shalt live," then has 
such a man enough of the truth to make him, if 
he will be, a religious man, yea, a regenerate, — 
that is, a new-born man, a man so " born again" 
that he may " enter the kingdom of heaven." 

That place whereon Jacob lighted and passed 
the night, as he journeyed, is just this state 
or condition of life which I have described, — 
the state of the natural man as to its dark- 
ness of mind and the obscurity of its vision of 
divine things. The night that comes on at the 
going down of the sun is the doubt and uncer- 
tainty which comes over our minds at times in 
the course of our ordinary life, when some 
old evil desires take hold of us and w T e are 



12 THE PILLOW OF STONES. 

tempted either to sin and to rebel against our 
heavenly Father, or to mistrust his love and 
mercy, to reject his Word, to deny his truth, 
to question his wisdom, yea, to lose sight of 
Him altogether, and to stand alone in our own 
dark world, with the sun gone down. 

Such extreme states of shaken belief, of 
sudden anxieties, and of miserable distrust and 
foreboding, are the results of the evils of our 
natural mind getting control over us for a 
season ; but at the beginning of the religious 
life we are more or less frequently in such a 
night. The world lies in a darkness just 
streaked with a little daylight. Our doubts 
and our blindness as to spiritual things may 
not trouble us much, because we are contented 
with the life of the world and its pleasures 
and goods ; but the soul is nevertheless really 
in the dark, it is overtaken by the night, its sun 
is hidden. We must tarry ; we see no way to 
go farther on. For good or bad, in this place 
we must tarry all night. 



THE PILLOW OF STONES. 1 



j 



That means until God gives us light again, 
which He will do if we pray to Him earnestly 
and really for it. 

Meanwhile, what shall a man do ? 

Shall he give himself up to dissatisfaction, 
to gloom and discontent and unrest? Shall 
he say there is nothing certain, nothing strong 
and sure, nothing but chance or fate ? Shall 
he say there is no happiness to be found in this 
life? Everywhere is failure and disappoint- 
ment? That the rewards of a pious, dutiful, 
religious life are but vain delusions? that the 
struggle against evil in one's self or in others 
is after all a vain and hopeless thing ? Shall 
he do this ? 

Let us see what Jacob did. 

Let us note carefully these Divine words: 
" And he took of the stones of that place and 
put them for his pillows, and lay down in that 
place to sleep." 

Benighted as he was on his way, unable to 
go farther, to turn right or left, did he think 



1 4 THE PILLOW OF STONES, 

what he might do if he were elsewhere, and 
vainly stumble on to find a better resting-place? 
No ; he took the stones of that place, just 
where he was, and made of them a pillow for 
him to rest upon in that place. 

Herein lies the lesson. of " Jacob's Pillow/' 
" He took the stones of that place and made 
himself a pillow, and lay down in that place to 
sleep." What we want is a pillow in the 
place where we are, — present help, present 
security, and rest. 

Tired of wandering in the midst of our doubt 
and darkness, we seek now for some real 
repose, surety, faith, and strength. If there is 
a God, if there is a heaven, if there is a com- 
munication of our inner life with the better 
world, and with better, healing, strengthening 
influences; if faith can cheer us, if charity and 
good works can strengthen us, if conflict with 
our besetting sins be really not in vain, we 
would now know it, and in some strong con- 
viction and unflinching resolve find stability, 



THE PILLOW OF STONES. 1 5 

repose, and peace in our lives. How shall we 
do this? How shall we, in this place, lay our- 
selves down in quietness, under the calm and 
protecting face of Heaven, and find the rest 
we need for our long life-journey ? 

Shall we now wish we were something else 
than what we are, or somewhere else than 
where we are ? 

Shall we say to ourselves, If I were only 
differently situated; if I had this and that in- 
cumbrance removed, this or that burden off my 
shoulders ; if, being poor, I was rich ; if, being 
rich and immersed in all the cares of large 
estates and the responsibilities of business and 
society, — if I were poor and living a quiet, 
humble, obscure life ; if, being ill, I were well 
and strong ; if, being in vigor of health, and 
with all the pleasures of a gay and worldly 
career open before me, I were obliged by ill 
health to lead a retired and more thoughtful 
and serious life ; if, in a word, I were some- 
where else, in some other state, and had other 



1 6 THE PILLOW OF STONES. 

duties placed before me than just these amid 
which I am, then I could easily combat my 
evils, could easily walk in the straight path of 
happy content and success. But here I am ; 
here has Providence placed me. If I am in 
doubt, trouble, anxiety, uncertainty, aimless- 
ness, unhappiness, the Lord of my life above 
me has permitted me to come into this state. 
He has permitted it to prevent worse evils. 
He is not unmindful of my condition. He is 
watching over me, and if I can do as Jacob did, 
I shall know that from where I lie there is a 
ladder reaching to heaven, and that his own 
merciful angels are ascending and descending 
over where I am. 

But to see this, and know this, we must first 
do as Jacob did ; we must in this place lie 
down, and for our pillow we must take of the 
stones of this place. 

Those who know something of the inner 
meaning of the words of the Bible, who know 
what the things there mentioned correspond 



THE PILLOW OF STONES. 1 7 

to spiritually, will remember that stones corre- 
spond to truth, — truth in its plainer, visible, 
outward forms, such as we see it in the literal 
precepts of God's Word ; the truths of the 
Ten Commandments for instance, or the truths 
which teach us to fight against self-love and all 
its sins, to strive to obey God, to love our 
fellow-man, to do our duty in that station 
where the Divine Providence has placed us. 
For to do our duty is to love our neighbor as 
ourselves ; to love our neighbor is to endeavor 
to serve him, to be useful to others both in 
natural and spiritual works, to live for others 
and not for ourselves. And this we cannot do 
except as we remember always that it is God 
who makes this our duty, and that the power 
and the love to do it can come only from Him. 
Now, these are the stones of which we must 
make our pillow. The stones of that place 
are the duties of to-day. To obey God's 
Word in the place or condition where it finds 
us, this is to take for our pillow " the stones of 



1 8 THE PILLOW OF STONES, 

that place." But the stones of one place are 
not just the same as the stones of some other 
place. The duties that belong to one person 
are not just like the duties belonging to 
another. And the peculiar duties, whether of 
evil things to be put away, or of good things 
to be done, these are not the same in one state 
of our life, one place or period of our life's 
journey, as are the duties belonging to some 
other state in our own life. What we have to 
do is to " take the stones of that place" where 
we are, the duties or the Divine commands 
which belong to just that state of mind or 
condition of life where Providence has per- 
mitted us to be placed. We are to take those 
stones, the divine truth as applying to our 
present needs, and make of them a pillow 
whereon we may rest. 

What a firm, sure, safe pillow ! What a 
blessed rest ! Oh ! what a heavenly repose is 
that for our souls, when we shall see the ladder 
reaching from the ground, the hard, low 



THE PILLOW OF STONES. 1 9 

ground whereon we have laid ourselves down 
confiding in God's love and care, — reaching 
from this ground far up to heaven, and the 
Lord standing above it, and his angels ascend- 
ing and descending over us, in their missions 
of truth and mercy ! 

A pillow of stones ! A hard pillow, do you 
say ? Yes, and often it is indeed a hard one. 
But except upon that pillow there is no rest 
for us, no vision of the helping angels, or of 
our redeeming Lord and heavenly Father. 
It is a hard pillow in the sense that duties are 
laborious, our evils hard to resist, our circum- 
stances in life trying, resignation to them 
difficult, — in a word, in the sense that our 
selfish, depraved, natural man makes hard and 
persists in making us think hard any spiritual 
work, any work of repentance and reformation, 
any duties of genuine religion, any acting upon 
the principles of the Church, any ceasing to 
act on theprinciples of selfish and worldly love. 
It is our evils that make the pillow hard. But 



20 THE PILLOW OF STONES. 

when once in the performance of those duties 
which are the stones whereon we lie down to 
rest, when once we have opened a way for the 
light, the comfort, the peace of heavenly 
influences within our souls, then how easy do 
these duties become, how upon that pillow of 
stones does our soul glide away into the 
peaceful sleep and the dream of angels ! 

Reader, as I said at the outset, " our Lord 
had no place whereon to lay his head." " Jacob 
had a pillow of stones." And you and I and 
all men have now, through the Lord's redeem- 
ing mercy, a pillow of stones whereon to lie. 
The Lord had no place whereon to lay his 
head, because there was no truth left in the 
Church, or in the world, whereinto his divine 
life might flow down to restore the union 
of earth to heaven, of lost men to their Crea- 
tor and Saviour. His Word was falsified and 
denied, from beginning to end. Therefore He 
came as the Divine, real Word himself, and 
was born a man on earth, that the Divine Life, 



THE PILLOW OF STONES. 21 

which is the Father, might be made manifest in 
Him and might through Him give light and life 
to the world once more. So He became our 
Rock, our Corner-stone, our Foundation, our 
Strength, our Rest. In Him, as the Divine 
Word revealed to us, taught us, read by us, 
hidden in our hearts, in Him we have the truth 
where in every place and condition of our life's 
journey we may lay ourselves down and take 
our rest. In his truth, which speaks daily in 
our hearts and in our consciences, has He given 
us our pillow of stones. Let us not, heedlessly, 
ungratefully, and in our blind complaining, re- 
ject this precious gift. 

1 ' Rest of the weary, 

Joy of the sad ; 
Hope of the dreary, 

Light of the glad ; 
Home of the stranger, 

Strength to the end ; 
Refuge from danger, 

Saviour and Friend ! 



22 THE PILLOW OF STONES. 

Pillow where, lying, 

Love rests its head; 
Peace of the dying, 

Life of the dead ; 
When my feet stumble, 

To thee I'll cry, 
Crown of the humble, 

Cross of the high : 
When my steps wander, 

Over me bend, 
Truer and fonder, 

Saviour and Friend ! ' ' 






And the woman said, The serpent beguiled nie> and I did 
eat. — Gen. in. 13. 



IN these words we have the beginning of 
the sins and the sorrows of our race. Up 
to this deed of transgression, the Garden of 
Eden was a paradise, a heaven upon earth. 
Man's condition was one of celestial inno- 
cence ; the Divine favor beautified our world 
and the whole inner and outer life of man. 
The benediction of the Creator was pronounced 
upon our earth and all it contained. Man and 
woman were created in the glorious and per- 
fect image of their Maker, and they were inno- 
cent before God and were not ashamed. 

For how many years, or centuries, or ages 
this reign of heavenly innocence and happiness 

23 



24 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 

continued, we have no means of learning, nor 
is it needful to inquire. The important thing 
to know is, and it is a most grateful and con- 
soling thought, that our race did not begin 
its history in sin and wickedness ; that the 
dawn of man's life upon earth was fair and 
radiant with heavenly beauty ; and that only 
after a period perhaps ages in duration did 
the cloud of evil bring the first gloom upon 
the human life. 

It is commonly said that our first parents 
sinned, and that evil and its miseries thus be- 
gan with the human race itself. But this is 
only an inference drawn from a literal state- 
ment in the chapter in Genesis which describes 
the transgression of Adam and Eve. But 
already in the first chapter we have the literal 
statement that God created man male and 
female: "male and female created he them;" 
and God said, Let them have dominion over the 
lower things of creation. 

Thus the man called Adam unquestionably 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 25 

means the human race, the word itself mean- 
ing man as a race. And after this account of 
the creation of the race, including male and 
female, there follows as a separate history the 
account of the Garden of Eden and its inmates. 
But no sooner is this account at an end than we 
read of Cain going to the land of Nod, taking 
a wife and building a city. Now if Adam and 
Eve, who transgressed and ate of the forbidden 
fruit, were the first and only two human beings 
on this earth, then who inhabited the land of 
Nod whither their son Cain afterwards went? 
And whom could he have taken for a wife ? 
Who inhabited the city which he built ? If the 
letter of the Bible is to be adhered to in this 
sense, then there were but five persons in ex- 
istence on our earth, and one of these, the wife 
of Cain, could hardly have been at the same 
time his sister. Hence, Adam and Eve were at 
least not her parents. And, notwithstanding 
that there were but five persons living, yet, one 
of these already built a city. Such an incon- 
» 3 



26 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 

sistency only shows very plainly that the names 
Adam and Eve do not refer to the two first 
human beings created on our earth, but rather 
to the whole race, and that what is said of 
them describes in a figurative manner what 
took place among the most ancient peoples. 
We do not here dispute the holy letter of the 
Scriptures, but we dispute that inference which 
some have drawn from the letter, and which 
the letter itself proves to be untenable. What 
is said of the man and the woman in the Gar- 
den of Eden may, indeed, be understood as 
applying to two persons only ; but there is no 
authority, even in the literal statement of the 
Bible, for declaring these to be the first and 
only parents of our race. In a figurative 
sense we may properly speak of them as such, 
knowing that Adam means man and Eve 
woman, and knowing also that what is 
recorded of them in the Holy Word is, when 
spiritually understood, a most perfect and 
truthful history of what occurred in the inte- 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 27 

rior or spiritual life of those ancient peoples 
from whom the nations of the earth now 
living are descended. 

But knowing as the church does at this day 
from revelation that the Holy Word is divine, 
and treats therefore of spiritual things under 
the clothing and imagery of natural things, we 
shall look to the spiritual contents of this 
history of the fall of our race for that spiritual 
and saving knowledge which the Lord designs 
to offer us through his Word. He has spoken 
these things concerning the creation of the 
world and the sin of our race in a parable ; 
but He does not design that we should remain 
ever in the parable, the enigma, only ; and at 
length that time has come when, by unfolding 
to the church the spiritual sense of the sacred 
Scriptures, " He speaks to us no longer in 
proverbs," and He tells us those many things 
which the minds of men, in past ages, were not 
ready to receive. In a word, according to the 
spiritual sense of these first chapters of Gene- 



28 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 

sis, the history of the creation of the world and 
Adam describes really the new creation, the 
regeneration of man's soul from being chaos 
and darkness to attaining the image and like- 
ness of God. The Garden of Eden is an 
image in natural things of the celestial and 
blessed state of the human race while yet in 
their primitive innocence and order. By Adam 
is meant this celestial or heavenly mind as to 
its rational or intellectual faculty ; by woman, 
or Eve, is meant that sense of one's own self- 
hood, or distinct existence, which comes from 
our being a free agent, capable of leading our- 
selves or being led by another. This self- 
hood of man, denoted by Eve, when filled with 
innocence from the Lord, and when freely 
determined to follow the Lord, is that which 
makes man's spiritual nature complete, and 
enables him to follow the Lord from love and 
choice, instead of being compelled thereto. 
From this heavenly and better self man serves 
the Lord, and is yet in the enjoyment of the 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE, 29 

highest freedom. He does not act, like a 
machine, solely from a power communicated 
from without, but as if from his own self, as the 
motive power, although this very self-hood, or 
free will itself, is equally the gift of God. 

When man from this heaven-inspired self 
wills freely to obey the Lord and live accord- 
ing to the Divine laws, he is enjoying the 
freedom of heaven itself; for the very blessed- 
ness and liberty of heaven consists solely in 
the harmony between it and those laws which 
have their origin in the infinite love and per- 
fect wisdom of the Lord. 

So long as this seemingly independent self- 
hood of man looks up to the Lord and desires 
to be wholly governed and led by Him, so long 
is it innocent ; and even self-love, being sub- 
ordinate to the love of God, and being itself 
the condition of man's freely loving others, is 
so far good and holy. And this is what is 
meant by the innocence in which Adam and 
his Eve were before their transgression. They 

3* 



30 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 

were not ashamed. No ! for as yet there was 
nothing sinful in this self-hood, — this free will 
of man ; the Lord kept it in innocence. But 
when man, from his independent self-hood, 
began to look downward to the things of 
nature and the appetites of the senses for 
motives of conduct, then this same self-hood 
was the instrument or medium of his being 
tempted, and of his committing sin. Man's 
free, voluntary nature, the moment it turns 
away from the Lord and the guidance of the 
interior motives of love and faith, and looks 
out to the world and its attractions, that mo- 
ment it makes a way for evil to come into and 
darken and poison the human life. For man's 
external and sensuous life should be controlled 
by the inner, and not the outer man. So long 
as the Lord rules from within, through love 
and faith, so long is the selfish nature of man 
kept subordinate and made useful and con- 
ducive to his true freedom and happiness. For 
to be free and happy is to live according to 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 3 1 

God's truth. But so soon as the external and 
corporeal nature of man is ruled by the things 
of the world, then it assumes a power which 
brings the internal or heavenly man into sub- 
jection ; the love of self and the love of the 
world become predominant, and the whole life 
becomes gradually more and more sensual 
and earthly. 

The fall of man consists, therefore, in this 
sin : that his self-hood, signified by the woman, 
by virtue of its freedom, which was God's holy 
gift, turned away from the inner guidance of 
God to the outer seductions of the senses and 
the w T orld ; and thus self-love, from being the 
innocent medium by which man could serve 
God and his neighbor, became the medium by 
which he not only served, but became a slave 
to, the world and to the evil passions and 
miserable lusts of his carnal nature. 

The woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, 
and I did eat." 

The ancients, when they desired to represent 



32 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 

a quality of the human mind, did not compare 
it to an animal or other object, but called it 
directly by the name of the animal or thing 
which corresponded to it. The same practice 
is adhered to in much of the writings of the 
Holy Word. Thus is our Lord named by the 
prophets and by the Evangelists the lion, and 
also the lamb. The lion evidently represents 
his Divine power ; the lamb his perfect inno- 
cence. So our Lord Himself, speaking of 
Herod, calls him "that fox," by which He would 
indicate his selfish, human cunning, as opposed 
to the heavenly wisdom of love and faith. 
Now the serpent, spoken of in our text as 
tempting the woman, is also the representative 
of a quality in the human mind ; and it is easy 
to see what this quality is. 

The serpent here mentioned is the sensual 
principle in man. It lies close to the earth, as 
the sensual things of the mind are closely con- 
nected with the body. Those who depend upon 
the evidence of the senses alone, whose confi- 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 33 

dence is only in material, tangible things, whose 
whole mind is, as it were, in their eyes, mouth, 
and organs of touch, whose reasoning is only 
from sensuous or visible things, — such persons 
are called serpents in the Holy Scriptures, and 
their natures do so truly correspond to the 
serpent that the creature itself may better 
represent the quality than any verbal definition 
depict it. The serpent is wary, cunning, cir- 
cumspect, swift, agile, deceitful, and armed with 
a deadly sting. It may properly symbolize, 
therefore, qualities both good and bad. For 
prudence and acuteness and careful discrimi- 
nation are very desirable qualities, and neces- 
sary for all to have who would walk safely the 
ways of this w r orld. The intelligence which 
man derives from science and from experience 
with men, all those good and useful things 
which we acquire through the use of the bodily 
senses, — these find also their symbol in the 
serpent. These are a necessary part of every 
man's nature, even the most pure and heavenly; 



34 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 

consequently our Lord warned his disciples to 
be wise as serpents ; and the serpent lifted up 
in the wilderness was the divinely-chosen 
prophecy of our Lord's suffering upon the 
cross, and the elevation and glorification in 
divine purity of the very lowest principles of 
that flesh and nature which He put on in this 
world. 

And it is easy to see that while man's 
rational and voluntary nature are devoted to 
following the heavenly dictates of love and 
faith, then the bodily senses and their knowl- 
edge will only tend to the growth of heavenly 
intelligence in the soul ; for all external knowl- 
edge and experience will be made use of to 
high and spiritual ends. But let the love of 
self and of the world for their own sake get the 
mastery ; let not the inmost soul, but the life 
of the body, be consulted ; then is the evidence 
of the senses brought in to contradict that of 
faith ; then are the pleasures of the world and 
the gratification of natural desires more de- 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 35 

lightful than those of the inner life ; then self- 
love leads the reason, and the senses lead self- 
love, and the power and the cunning of the 
senses and sensual things are able to lead man 
wholly away from the freedom of heaven into 
the bondage of hell. Thus it is that the man 
said, "The woman beguiled me;" and the 
woman said, " The serpent beguiled me, and I 
did eat." 

It is wonderful when we reflect what are the 
four characters introduced in this scene in the 
Garden of Eden. They are the Lord, man, 
woman, and the serpent. It is a perfect pic- 
ture of the human mind at all times. That 
scene is repeated again and again in the 
interior life of us all, whether we be con- 
sciously aware of it or not. The Lord is in 
the inmost, in the highest, heavenly degree of 
the mind, speaking by his Holy Spirit, warning 
us by the voice of conscience, moving us 
secretly, restraining us gently, leading us, if 
possible, in the heavenly way. Beneath, or 



36 THE TEMPTATION OE EVE. 

next in order to this celestial plane, through 
which the Lord exerts the influence of his 
Holy Spirit, is the rational or spiritual plane 
of the mind, represented by Adam. Beneath 
this again is the external man in which one 
realizes consciously one's self-hood, in which 
one seems to think, to feel, to act, to live of 
one's self. This is Eve, the woman. And 
beneath this plane still is the most external or 
sensual degree of the mind, which is closely 
connected with the body and the outer world, 
and which is made up of thoughts, knowl- 
edges, and appetites, directly connected with 
the bodily senses. This plane of the mind, or 
of the human life, is the serpent that is ever 
beguiling the woman to eat of the tree of 
the knowledge of good and evil, and to be as 
God. The true heavenly order of the mind is 
that wherein the Lord not only rules and pro- 
vides, but is looked up to as the way and the 
source of all blessing and happiness. The 
rational faculty filled with love and faith then 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 37 

leads the lower, selfish nature to look upward 
to pure and heavenly pursuits and delights, to 
serve not self for the sake of self, but to live 
for the delights of charity ; and the lower, the 
sensual mind, brings in all its treasures of see- 
ing and hearing, and all the experiences of the 
outer life, to prove the goodness of God and 
his wisdom, and to enrich the mind with ma- 
terials for useful and happy labor. Controlled 
by a pure love of God, and illumined by the 
light of heaven, the reason directs the external 
will, and thus brings the senses into subjection 
to the laws of true order and usefulness. 
Those things which pertain to man's happiness 
and his relations to God, and also the mysteries 
of the future life, man, while in this orderly 
condition, views from an interior perception. 
The substance of the spiritual life, its reality 
and its happiness, are revealed to him from 
within. The world without corresponds to 
and fulfills all this inward experience. Man is 
content thus to obey the Lord, to be clepend- 

4 



38 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 

ent on Him, and to know and believe that which 
is thus interiorly verified to him. 

But when man begins to desire to depend on 
himself, and to be led by himself, then he appeals 
to self for evidence of duty, of right and wrong, 
of happiness and unhappiness, and self looks 
out to the world and its sensuous experiences, 
and thus the whole order of life is inverted. 
The celestial or heavenly mind is made subor- 
dinate, and the sensual mind is placed supreme. 
The voice which dictates and teaches is now no 
longer the voice of God, but the voice of the 
serpent. The delight of man is no longer in 
being led by the Lord, and feeling one's de- 
pendence upon Him, and confiding in his re- 
vealed truth for all knowledge of duty antl 
of happiness, but is rather in touching that 
forbidden fruit which the serpent holds out, in 
appealing to the senses and the world for a 
test of what is good and not good, in being 
one's own master and one's own teacher, in 
verifying by visible and tangible proof the 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 39 

things of faith and revelation, thus, in a word, 
in " eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, 
and in being as God, knowing good and evil." 
It was in this inversion of the mind that sin, 
disorder, and all the sorrows of the world had 
their beginning. It was in looking to self 
rather than to the Lord, and consulting the 
senses and earthly science rather than Divine 
revelation for the rule of faith and of duty. 
The story is ever the same to this day, the sin 
is the same, the miserable consequences are 
the same. Man's soul, subjecting reason to 
self-love, and self-love to the dictates of sensual 
pleasure and sensual evidence, is become a 
slave to the world and the victim to its deceits. 
The love of self and of the world has for its 
inevitable result, if cultivated and willingly 
indulged, to make a man believe in himself 
and not in the Lord and his Word, and to sup- 
pose that what he cannot apprehend sensu- 
ously and scientifically has no existence. Men 
thus become, says Swedenborg, " altogether evil 



40 THE TEMPTATION OE EVE. 

and false, and thus see all things perversely ; 
they regard evil as good, and good as evil ; 
falses as truths, and truths as falses ; realities 
as nothing, and nothing as everything. They 
call hatred, love ; darkness, light ; death, life. 
They are denominated in the Word, the lame 
and the blind." 

This, then, is the self-love of man which, 
turned away from the Lord, and relying on 
itself or on the evidence of the senses rather 
than on the truths of revelation, and following 
the enticements of the senses rather than the 
dictates of religion, is infernal and accursed. 

Look out upon the world, and behold the 
vices, the foolish and insane pleasures, the 
wars, the ruin and iniquity in which men do in 
our day run riot. Listen to what the so-called 
learned say and write, turning God's Holy 
Word into ridicule and a lie, and resolving the 
Deity itself into a mere reflection of our own 
miserable humanity, — and then say if the ser- 
pent has not beguiled the woman, and the 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 4 1 

woman the man, and they together eaten the 
forbidden fruit and become as gods,* knowing 
good and evil The rejection of faith and 
contempt of God's Word is proving in our 
day the truth of that warning word of the 
Lord : " In the day that ye eat thereof, ye shall 
surely die." For, says Swedenborg again, "a 
desire to investigate the mysteries of faith by 
the senses and science is the cause of the fall 
of every church; for hence come not only 
false opinions, but also evils of life. 
. . . "Those who consult the senses and 
science respecting what is to be believed, not 
only precipitate themselves into doubt, but 
also into denial and thus into darkness, and 
into every kind of cupidity. For when they 
believe the false, they practice the false. And 
when they believe there is nothing spiritual 
and celestial, they believe that only the cor- 
poreal and worldly exists, and, accordingly, they 
love what is of self and the world ; and, hence, 
from this falsity come lusts and evils. At this 

4* 



42 . THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 

day the evil is much greater than at former 
times, because men can now confirm the incre- 
dulity of the senses by scientific reasonings 
unknown to the ancients, which have given 
birth to an indescribable degree of darkness 
at which men would be astounded did they 
know its extent!" — [Arcana Ccelestia, 232, 

233-] 

The serpent of our sensual nature is ever 

beguiling us to taste the pleasures of sin, and 
to rely upon external rather than internal 
evidence as to what is good, enjoyable, and 
enduring ; and if we yield to self-love, we 
shall, before we are aware, have lost our faith 
in the truths of God's Word, and shall be able 
no longer to bring our perplexities and our 
doubt to that sure and final arbiter, but shall 
be left to be tossed and driven about by the 
fluctuating passions and whims of a worldly- 
heart and infidel mind. 

Faith dies within us the moment we place 
sensual evidence and sensual good over Divine 



THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 43 

revelation and the duties of religion. And as 
faith dies the soul dies. 

Driven from Paradise, and shut out from its 
pure delights by our actual sins, let us look to 
Him who, according to the prophecy, has come 
to bruise the serpent's head, and to open 
those blessed gates once more to a sinful and 
sorrowful world. He has said to the children 
of men, " Come unto me, all ye that labor, and 
I will give you rest." He is the way, the truth, 
and the life. He it is who, like the serpent 
in the wilderness, being Himself " lifted up," is 
drawing unto Himself all those who believe 
in Him and do the work of repentance. 

" Thou strong and loving Son of man, 
Redeemer from the bonds of sin, 
1 Tis Thou the living spark dost fan 
That sets the breast on fire within. 

"Thou openest heaven once more to men, 
The soul's true home, thy kingdom, Lord, 
And I can trust and hope again 
And feel myself akin to God. 



44 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 

"In Thee I find a nobler birth, 
A glory o'er the world I see, 
And Paradise returns to earth, 

And blooms again for us in Thee." 



III- 

gjj0ali'tf Qovt; tax, i\xt gmx\ $tt &xtt. 



And he stayed yet other seven days ; and sent forth the 
dove, which returned not again unto him any more. — 
Gen. viii. 12. 

THE students of the Bible and of nature 
have had much to say about the Flood, 
querying as to when and where it occurred, 
and how widely it prevailed. I do not know 
that they have advanced much beyond the 
plain narrative given in Genesis ; and if they 
had established all the natural facts concerning 
it to their own and everybody's satisfaction, I 
do not know that we would be spiritually much 
wiser than we may be on reading this simple 
narration in God's Holy Word, But it is 
quite certain that if men would give an equal 
amount of attention and care to the study 
of that Flood which is now and at all times 
prevailing in some degree over their mental 

45 



46 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 

world ; if they would watch the rise and fall 
of its waters, and be on the lookout for 
its mountain-tops, and for the happy rest in 
Ararat, the mountain of Light; then would this 
be no longer a vain study of what is merely 
temporary and local, but a pursuit of what 
belongs to the immortal, spiritual life of our 
race. This would be a study indeed of the 
Bible account of the Flood in its genuine and 
true sense. For all things in the outer world 
are pictures of things in the soul's world. And 
the Bible everywhere, in relating what seem 
to be natural occurrences, is describing really 
the things which take place in our souls, or in 
the inner, spiritual world. So it is with the 
story of the Flood. The waters of the Flood 
are the temptations and desolations which come 
over the immortal souls of men. The earth 
which is covered is the depraved will, with its 
evil lusts and passions ; for over these rise 
higher and higher the waters of conflict and 
temptation. 



THE SOUL SET FREE. 47 

The ark, with its contents, is the church in 
the soul ; that is, the remnant of whatever is 
good and holy and saving preserved by the 
Divine mercy from entire destruction, laid up 
within the conscience, or the higher part of 
man, there to be the means of his enduring, 
unhurt, the time of tribulation, and of his 
coming finally to the place of his soul's rest 
and salvation. All those who are drowned by 
the Flood are those who have not the elements 
of the church in them, who have not preserved 
a good and pure conscience intact even amid 
the rising waters of false persuasions and evil 
seduction. These are drowned ; their souls 
are carried away to hell by the overwhelming 
tide of evils and false persuasions, the cunning 
voices of secret, sinful desire, the constant 
drawing of evil habits too long indulged in. 

But those in the ark are saved. They are not 
a single family only, but they are the thousands 
of faithful souls of whom Noah and his family 
are the symbol or representative. They are 



4^ NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 

all who are of the spiritual church, — the church 
of faith ; they are all, that is, who have the 
church with its faith and its charity in their souls. 
These are borne safely over the waters of the 
flood ; these rise as the waters rise ; these see 
the old, the corrupted, and evil world disappear 
before their eyes, and at length see again the 
mountain-tops as of a new earth, and behold 
over them the rainbow as in new heavens of 
light and beauty and everlasting peace. 

The first idea that comes to the mind of a 
child or grown person, in reading of the Flood 
and the ark, is, no doubt, that it was a fine 
thing to be Noah, floating securely in the ark 
over all the wide waste of waters under which 
his fellow-men had perished, and to have with 
him there his own family, and a pair of all the 
fowl and cattle and creeping things. 

Well, it was indeed a good thing, but not 
pleasant after our earthly way of judging. 
It was the means of salvation, but its way a 
hard and tiresome way. Noah longed to see 



THE SOUL SET FREE. 49 

the waters abate and the land appear again. 
He longed for the dry land, the blooming fields, 
the wide, free earth, wherein to range abroad. 
His ark was a prison ; the endless, dreary 
waste of waters was like a vast wall, shutting 
in his steps, his gaze, his whole life, to the 
narrow world of self. The heavens above 
were dark with the clouds of rain. He longed 
again for the sun, the smell of the earth, the 
sound of the cattle in the pastures, and the 
pursuits of the busy, homely life. 

The landsman who has made a long voyage 
at sea, knows how refreshing and heart-restor- 
ing is the first sight of land ; and when the 
land-gales bring him the sweet odors of woods 
and the sounds of the lowing cattle, or of the 
farmer s scythe, or of the church-bell ringing in 
a distant hamlet, his bosom swells with a new 
and nameless emotion. He thanks God, whose 
are the seas and who made them, that he has 
been preserved while upon deep waters ; but 
again he thanks God, whose hands did form 
c 5 



50 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 

the dry land, that on the dry land is his home 
and that the harbor is nigh. 

Thus Noah longed to go forth from the 
ark. He rejoiced when, at the end of forty 
days, he " opened the window of the ark he 
had made" and beheld the tops of the moun- 
tains. And he sent out first a raven, " which 
went forth to and fro, until the waters were 
dried up." And then he sent forth a dove 
from him, to see if the waters were abated. 
But the dove found no rest for the sole of her 
foot, and returned unto him into the ark, for 
the waters were on the face of the whole 
earth ; and he put forth his hand and took her, 
and pulled her unto him in the ark. And he 
stayed yet other seven days ; and again he 
sent forth the dove out of the ark; and the 
dove came in to him in the evening ; and, 
lo, in her mouth was an olive-leaf, plucked 
off: so Noah knew that the waters were 
abated from off the earth. And he stayed 
yet other seven days ; and again he sent 



THE SOUL SET FREE. 5 I 

forth the dove, which returned not again unto 
him any more. 

The story of the ark, of the long and dreary 
confinement, of the raven and the dove sent 
forth, and of the dove's finding at last a rest 
for the sole of her foot and returning no more, 
— this is at once a beautiful and a true story of 
the life of the soul which is being regenerated. 
We have not here an allegory merely that we 
can apply at random to anything we wish to 
illustrate, but an accurate history of those 
states of the soul which do actually succeed 
each other in the course of spiritual birth and 
progress. Let us for a moment reverently 
and carefully explore the inner meaning of 
this wondrous narrative. The recollection of 
these sacred mysteries of the Divine wisdom 
hidden in the depths of the Word of God, of 
which we may obtain, indeed, but a poor and 
imperfect glimpse, may be in some future 
hour a source of strength and consolation to 
the soul. 



52 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 

I have called the life in the ark an imprison- 
ment, and, therefore, said that it was no pleas- 
ant condition to be in, after our worldly way 
of thinking. But it is the true and only con- 
dition of security in the time when the floods 
of infernal evil are sweeping over our soul's 
world. The way of life is elsewhere called a 
straight and narrow way into which few enter. 
So with the ark, it is a narrow place for the 
abode of the soul. We seek rather the free, 
open land ; and our efforts toward this life of 
true spiritual liberty are described by the 
sending forth of the dove three times from 
the ark. 

This, then, is to be borne in mind, that the 
ark represents that bondage to which we 
are committed ; that involuntary confinement 
within the laws of our religion, while the 
world's temptations surge about the soul, and 
when our first step from the limits which our 
conscience has set up is a step into the deep 
and perilous waters of evil and the soul's 



THE SOUL SET TREE. 53 

ruin. The mountain-tops appearing are as 
the dawn of faith, which promises us freedom 
at last, which says the land is near, — that good 
land where we may go in and out and find 
pasture, — that is, where we shall live freely, 
where, our hearts being impelled by the love 
of what is good and in accordance with the 
holy will of God, we may act out those im- 
pulses of the renewed will, and find in the 
service of God the only real and true liberty. 
And we send forth the dove, as did Noah, 
every time we explore our lives by the light 
of the Divine Word, to see if genuine, un- 
selfish goodness and the truth which we in- 
wardly honor and are compelling ourselves 
to obey, with much difficulty, perhaps, and 
with frequent failure, if these, the elements of 
the church within, are taking root and actually 
growing up in our lower and external man ; 
if the low and brutal passions and desires of 
the flesh, if selfish and unbelieving worldliness 
are giving way in reality to sentiments of true 

5* 



54 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 

charity, to the higher and angelic affections for 
what is purely true and good. 

In the narrative it is said that after forty 
days the mountain-tops appeared, and Noah 
opened the window and looked out; and he first 
sent a raven out, which went forth to and fro. 
It is not said that the raven came back. We 
are not told where the raven rested, but it did 
not come back. But the dove which Noah 
sent forth came back, finding no rest for the 
sole of her foot. 

And it is so with every one who, after a long 
period of his life, spent amid the tumults of 
temptation, of inward conflict and struggle 
between the evil desires of the heart and the 
religious restraints of the conscience, begins at 
last to behold the reality of a spiritual faith, to 
feel assured of final victory, to believe that 
God's truth, firmly adhered to in the conscience, 
will at last be the stronger, and will enable him 
to master his evil inclinations. The waters 
seem to abate ; the dawn appears ; the moun- 



THE SOUL SET FREE. 55 

tain-tops are seen. With the eye of faith and 
trust the penitent and long-tried soul looks out 
upon the dreary waste of this world's life. 

Through the opened window of the soul the 
light of heaven pours in ; a sense of rest and 
hope and confidence comes over him. The 
flood is past; now he will go forth bold and 
strong upon the new and better life. 

But it is only a raven that is sent out to 
explore the land, — a raven which flies to and 
fro. and comes not back. The raven is a bird 
of darkness, an image of the false imaginings 
that spring from the evil heart. So long as 
the will is not purified of its evil desires and 
likings, the thoughts which it puts forth are but 
false and deceitful. The survey of life, made 
by the first dim light of faith, is apt to be 
a false and deceptive one. The life of re- 
ligion looks easy and practicable enough, but 
there lies selfishness at the bottom of our 
motives after all. This our religion, so readily 
put on, is but a cloak to hide our real infidel 



56 NOAH'S DOVE; 0A\ 

nature from the world and those whose judg- 
ment we fear, or whose favor we seek ; and 
our faith thus outwardly professed, is but the 
flatterer of some selfish love,, some hidden 
pride, some secret desire to be rewarded for 
our goodness in another world, to be thought 
better than our neighbors in this. But this is 
not the rest and peace and liberty of the 
spiritual life. This is not the life of genuine 
religion brought down to the natural will, 
entering into all the motives and affections of 
external man. The raven flies to and fro. 
There is still unrest, still the seeking and not 
finding, still the unsatisfied longing for real 
freedom and final repose. The internal vision 
is obscured by the false ideas of the unregen- 
erate reason. The old law of the flesh — the 
notion that this and that is good, and to be 
sought after, because the natural will desires 
it — still asserts its sway. The false principle, 
represented by the raven, although finding no- 
where rest, and bringing no real peace and 



THE SOUL SET FREE. S7 

quiet to the soul, continues to invade even 
the believing mind so long as the earth is 
submerged; that is, so long as the natural will 
is still inspired with its inherited affections of 
evil. Happy is he whose first glance at his 
life from the window of faith sees fluttering 
about this bird of falsehood, this omen of evil ; 
for he then knows that the heart is not pure, 
the mind is not full of light, but that he has 
still to rid himself of much that is evil and 
false. Happy for him that the raven goes to 
and fro, and comes not back again ; the ques- 
tionings, the doubts, the anxieties of mind 
caused by the presence of this conflicting 
element of unbelief and falsity, will only tend, 
in the end, to purify the mind and establish it 
the more surely in the truths of saving faith. 

But the dove is next sent forth. The dove 
is the spirit of goodness and truth, going 
forth from the faith which is in man's interior 
nature. The Lord resides in the inmost soul ; 
it is from his presence there that man has con- 



5 8 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 

science or preserves any remnant of goodness 
and truth and can exercise any faith. In this 
plane of the life, signified by sending forth the 
dove from the ark, it is the Lord that in reality 
gives us the knowledge to detect our sins and 
the spirit to overcome them. The dove being 
the symbol of all that is innocent and holy in 
our faith, its going forth naturally typifies the 
desire on the part of the holy principle in the 
inner man to implant itself in the outer man, 
to be made actual in the daily life. It is a 
desire that the will of God, as understood and 
revered in the interior mind, may descend and 
be carried out in the life of the body in all the 
lower and outermost details of man's life in the 
world ; that thus the Divine petition may be 
fulfilled, " Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven. " 

But what is the result of this desire on the 
part of the faithful soul thus to bring its 
religion down to the external, daily life ? The 
dove goes forth indeed, but it returns again, 



THE SOUL SET FREE. 59 

11 having- found no rest for the sole of her foot." 
Thus, in that ground of the natural will, there 
is still no room for the heavenly principles of 
goodness and truth. Religion is still only a 
thing of belief, an exalted state of thought and 
feeling occasionally experienced in the soul, 
but as yet having no real rest and basis in the 
external, actual conduct of life. No ; leaving 
the intellect, the memory, the occasional excite- 
ment of the purer and more refined emotions 
of the soul out of sight, — for in these such like 
religion of faith finds its abode, — and coming 
down to the body with its passions, the natural 
heart with its tastes and desires, its purposes 
and plans, its hopes and its ambitions, we shall 
find little room there for the real influence 
of spiritual motives, of genuine love of good- 
ness and truth for their own sake, or for the 
sake of the Holy Father and giver of them to 
the soul. It is not that a man is leading a 
voluntary evil life, for he has already for a long 
time perhaps been ruled in his outward actions 



6o 



NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 



by the dictates of his conscience ; but still 
this life of outward goodness and order is dis- 
cordant to his heart's real affections ; and there- 
fore it is said that in the ground, that is, in the 
affections of the will, the dove, or the holy spirit 
of faith, finds no rest for the sole of her foot. 

But another seven days go by, another 
week, or spiritual season of trial ; and again 
the seventh, a holy day of rest, is come. 
Advanced through renewed temptations and 
newly-gained victories to a higher state of life, 
again the holy things of religion seek escape 
from the narrow chambers of the inner mind 
into the broad realm of the actual life. 

And now the dove, sent forth again, returns 
in the even-time, and, lo, an olive-leaf pluckt 
off. This, the olive-leaf, is the first harbinger 
of peace, the promise of the holy fruit of reli- 
gion which shall yet be borne on the redeemed 
and enlivened soil of the heart. The olive- 
tree is the good of charity : the leaf is the 
truth which teaches this goodness. The olive- 



THE SOUL SET FREE. 6 1 

leaf brought back by the dove at even-time is 
the first dawn of that perception of truth which 
comes from good affections in the heart. For 
there are two sorts of truth known in men : 
The truths learned and retained in the intel- 
lect, and the truths that tell themselves, as it 
were, out of the depths of pure religious love 
and actual charity of daily life. 

The latter truths are called perceptions. 
They are the highest consciousness of truth 
we have. They are like the voice of the 
Holy Spirit speaking softly and secretly in the 
inner man. When thus we begin to know the 
truth from the love of that goodness which the 
truth teaches, then we may know that land is 
near ; that the long, wearisome journey over 
temptation's rough waters is well-nigh ended ; 
that our foot shall soon find rest on the broad 
lands of free and peaceful and happy living. 

Yea, and when yet another seven days are 
ended, when the last trials necessary for the 
soul's purification and victory over its evils are 



62 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 

undergone to the end, and the blessed Sabbath 
of heavenly rest dawns upon us, then shall we 
send forth the dove, never to return again. 

The dove shall find at last its rest upon 
the refreshed and blooming land ; the waters 
shall have left the earth ; the fountains of the 
abyss shall be dried up. With our wills 
cleansed by the waters of temptation from 
every evil thing and ready to bear the fruits 
of our faith in the lowest as in the highest 
relations and duties of life, we shall go forth 
at length from the place of bondage into the 
broad land of spiritual freedom. No longer 
shall the gulf of the evil and the false threaten 
us on every side ; no longer shall the infernal 
abyss send forth its wretched crew to infest 
our souls, to overwhelm us with their false 
and deathly persuasions. We shall have 
learned to live in and by the truth of God's 
Word ; and the truth shall make us free. 

Such is the liberty, such the peace of heaven. 
Is it not worth the long and tedious voyage 



THE SOUL SET TREE. 63 

to come to such a land at last? Is it not 
the wiser part here to govern our lives by 
the straight though often trying and irksome 
rule of our religion, seeing that thus only shall 
we rise above those desolating evils and fatal 
delusions under which so many souls have 
gone down, than to mistake for freedom the 
bondage to our evil passions and appetites, 
those chains which Satan is ever trying to 
forge around our souls? 

The true freedom in this life is the render- 
ing of careful service and obedience to God's 
holy laws. This may be involuntary, and thus 
arduous and difficult, and the way of indul- 
gence seem the only broad, free way. But 
all that makes God's service arduous is the 
unwilling, the unconverted heart. When the 
heart's affections are for heavenly things, 
when the heart is ready to enjoy the happiness 
of heaven, then will its delight be in the law 
of the Lord ; and we shall walk at liberty 
seeking his precepts. 



rv". 






And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and 
wine : and he was the priest of the most high God. — 
Gen. xiv. 18. 

MANY centuries have passed over the earth 
since the event here described took place. 
And yet in this simply but forcibly portrayed 
picture we see the true pattern of that which 
to-day is done before our own eyes. Now, 
too, upon the altars of our churches, are the 
bread and wine brought forth by the Lord's 
priest and offered for the blessing of every 
soul that, like Abraham, comes home victorious 
from the battle with the enemy. What sublime 
meaning lay hid in that bread and wine brought 
forth by the king of Salem and offered unto 
Abraham, a refreshment and a blessing in the 
64 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 65 

midst of the arduous conflicts of his life ! 
Long ages passed away, and in the same city 
of Salem again are those wondrous symbols, 
bread and wine, brought forth for the refresh- 
ment of man. Again is it Melchizedek, the 
true King of Righteousness, yea, it is Salem's 
rightful and eternal King, who now on the night 
of his own betrayal, after eating the pass- 
over with his disciples, takes bread and wine 
and distributes to them, saying of the bread, 
" this is my Body," and of the wine, " this is 
my Blood." And so doing, He, who is verily 
a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, 
enjoins upon his human followers the perpetual 
offering of the same bread and wine, saying, 
" This do in remembrance of me!" 

And now, when we see before us, upon the 
Lord's table, the same sacred symbols conse- 
crated by the worship of ages, forever distin- 
guished from all other created substance by 
being chosen by our blessed Saviour as the 
emblems of his own Divine Body and Blood, 

6* 



66 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 

when, in obedience to his solemn command, 
we come into the presence of our eternal Priest 
and King to receive, under the figure of these 
material elements, that heavenly refreshment 
of which our souls are in need, and reflect how, 
before the abiding statutes of our Divine re- 
ligion, the ages, the nations, the monuments of 
earth pass away and are as nothing, shall we 
not recognize in this most holy Sacrament that 
which is forever above man's devising, that 
which could only have been conceived by Him 
whose eye beholds eternity, "whose command- 
ments stand fast for ever and ever, and are 
done in truth and uprightness"? Yea, well 
may we exclaim in the presence of this per- 
petual memorial of the Divine mercy, in the 
presence of those symbols w r hich for many 
ages prophesied, and which for evermore shall 
recall, the Divine incarnation, the eternal Word 
made flesh, the Bread of heaven come down to 
be the food of man, — " The works of the Lord 
are great, sought out of all them that have 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 67 

pleasure therein. He sent redemption unto 
his people ; He hath commanded his covenant 
forever; holy and reverend is his name !" 

" Therefore we, before Him bending, 

This great Sacrament revere ; 
Types and shadows have their ending, 

For the newer rite is here ; 
Faith, our outward sense befriending, 

Makes our inward vision clear." 

In Melchizedek's offering of bread and wine 
we behold an early type of the Holy Supper of 
the Christian Church. The occasion and the 
circumstance of this offering will, therefore, be, 
in a figurative manner, analogous to those 
states of worship which are proper to the 
celebration by the Christian of this most holy 
solemnity. 

Abraham, we read, returned from his wars 
with King Chedorlaomer, who had conquered, 
together with many other lands, also Sodom, 
the land wherein Abraham's brother Lot dwelt, 
and had taken Lot captive. Abraham returned 



68 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 

victorious, having liberated his brother and 
destroyed this invading king and his host. 
Now, as he returns to his home, it is written, 
"And Melchizedek king of Salem brought 
forth bread and wine : and he was the priest 
of the most high God." And he blessed 
Abraham. 

We may behold in this history of Abraham 
a twofold representative. On the one hand, 
Abraham may be regarded as the prophetic 
type of our Saviour, and all that is recorded of 
Abraham is, in its spiritual meaning, a descrip- 
tion of the interior life of our Lord in assuming 
and glorifying his humanity. It is to this inte- 
rior reference to Himself, contained in the 
spiritual sense of the Old Testament, that our 
Lord referred when He said, " Search the Scrip- 
tures, for they testify of me," and also when 
He explained unto his disciples, in the books 
of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms, "things 
concerning Himself.'' But our Saviour's life in 
the humanity was itself a pattern of what ours 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 69 

should be in becoming truly his followers. 
Therefore the spiritual things contained in 
Abraham's history may also have reference to 
the experience of all men alike in becoming 
regenerate. 

In the midst of a life of war and disquietude 
behold, then, a season of temporary victory and 
rest, a peaceful return to one's home, the 
greeting of one who is both priest and king, 
and the refreshment and blessing tendered by 
his hand in the name of the most high God. 
Can we not in this outline behold some dearly- 
remembered scene out of the life we have 
lived ? Or may we not at least have this 
before us as that which is promised to every 
Christian by the Divine mercy and wisdom 
which ordained the sacrament of the Holy 
Supper ? For what is this but a feast of re- 
freshment and blessing by the way-side of a 
weary and toilsome life ? When do we appre- 
ciate this so fully as after a season of bitter 
temptations and internal warfare ? Who alone 



70 MELCHIZEDEICS OBLATION; OR, 

is it who meets us at the gates of Salem, the 
eternal city of Peace ? Who stills the conflict 
of the soul and fills our hearts with new vigor, 
with happy hopes and fresh courage, but the 
same Giver of all Peace, the true Melchizedek, 
the King of Righteousness, the eternal Priest? 
Like Abraham, we have our battles to fight. 
We must expect at times to have the quiet, 
the happy security of our inner life disturbed, 
and to have to go down to fight the invaders 
of Sodom and Gomorrah, where our brother is 
being taken captive. In other words, we must 
endure temptations from the things of the 
lower and outer man. We are drawn into all 
kinds of snares and enticements by the appe- 
tites and the persuasions of the senses and the 
reasonings of the depraved will. This lower 
and sensual degree of the nature is that brother 
Lot which we are to rescue. With the light 
of Divine truth and with all the high motives 
of our religion we must go down into the fray. 
Faith, perseverance, self-denial, and brotherly 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 7 1 

love must be brought into hand-to-hand con- 
flict with doubt and denial of God and religion, 
with a weak, self-indulgent, self-excusing mo- 
rality, with a mighty, almost irresistible impulse 
to have one's own way, to accomplish one's own 
purposes, let what will stand between. For 
our better nature, our conscience, the seat of 
our faith, and of our truly good and upright 
motives, so far as we have any, stands in the 
relation of a brother to the lower, carnal, and 
self-willed part of our being. Abraham is the 
representative of the internal, and consequently 
the higher and heavenly plane of the mind. 
Lot, that of the external, the worldly, or natural 
plane. The war of Abraham for the deliverance 
of Lot is, therefore, only a figure descriptive 
of every conflict which goes on in the human 
heart between the higher and the lower motives 
and principles of conduct. Conscience, revela- 
tion, religion, against appetite, infidelity, self-in- 
dulgence ; the angels of heaven arrayed against 
Satan ; the spirit warring against the flesh. 



72 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 

Nor as a man advances in Christian life does 
this conflict, this occasional anxiety and distress 
of soul, become less intense and severe, but 
rather more so. Like the young warrior, the 
better he is skilled in the use of arms the farther 
he is sent to the front into the heat of the conflict. 
Many souls pass through the world in a state 
of sluggish sleep, hardly knowing at all what 
that temptation of spirit, what that tribulation 
is through which man enters the kingdom 
of heaven. They purposely dull their hearts 
that they may not feel the cuts of remorse. 
They blind their eyes that they may not see, 
and make themselves deaf that they may not 
hear. They are like Lot in his captured land 
of Sodom, without a brother Abraham dwell- 
ing at Hebron who may come down and 
rescue him. 

But if the Christian's conflict is more severe 
as he advances in the life of religion, if temp- 
tations multiply, and, in growing more interior 
and refined and subtle, become thereby all the 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 73 

more intense in their power and insidious in 
their attacks, on the other hand he is supplied 
with ever-increasing strength from the Al- 
mighty defender and protector of the faithful ; 
he is nearer to the Lord, and receives more 
immediately and constantly the inflowings of 
the Divine life. 

In whatever resistance we can offer to 
an evil enticement, in whatever endurance, 
patience, courage, and hope we maintain in 
seasons of intense anguish of spirit, and when 
we are tempted by a thousand things, within 
and without, to give way to despair and tears 
and the overwhelming sorrows of the heart, in 
our every conflict with evil in whatever form, 
the Lord is present with us, and gives to us all 
the power we have to resist, to endure, and to 
overcome. He is never nearer, never more 
abundantly affording us the goodness and the 
truth we need, than just when we are in our 
most grievous temptations, when we seem most 
forsaken and alone. But these secret affec- 
d 7 



74 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 

tions of good and truth, the genuine love and 
faith we receive from Him, the source of all 
our soul's life and strength, — these at such 
times are not perceived in us in their own 
quality. Coming at once into conflict with 
the evils so violently roused within us, they 
add only to the distress and confusion of our 
minds, even as the arrival of fresh troops on 
the field of battle, although the harbinger of 
final victory and peace, does yet at first only 
make the contest more fierce and desperate. 

But it is of the Divine Providence that this 
inner strife between good and evil should not 
have to be constantly maintained, and that man 
should enjoy occasional seasons of seeming 
victory and peaceful repose. Like the regu- 
larly recurring Sabbaths, the days of rest, and 
like the cities of refuge set apart in times of 
old, wherein a man, whatever wickedness he 
may have done, was for a time secure from his 
pursuers, so do the occasional intervals of 
peaceful, quiet, harmonious life serve to re- 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 75 

fresh, enliven, and encourage the soul of man. 
In these seasons of rest a man is not rid of or 
cleansed from his old evils, but the affections 
and thoughts of evil are, as it were, put to 
sleep in his mind ; they give over for awhile 
their combat against what is good, heavenly, 
and peaceful ; they cease to trouble and tor- 
ment the soul with their innumerable tempta- 
tions ; though not wholly conquered, they do 
for a season keep^ the peace. And it is in 
those times that man feels the blessings of the 
Divine presence, and learns something of the 
nature of that heavenly food with which the 
Lord is constantly nourishing our immortal 
souls. Though in reality no nearer now than 
in more troubled and unquiet hours, though 
affording us no more directly the food and aid 
we need than when we are in the midst of the 
fray, still, now in the hour of tranquil and 
exalted rest the Lord reveals Himself more 
clearly to us as the bringer of peace and of 
every spiritual blessing, and we know the near- 



76 MELCHIZEDEK' S OBLATION; OR, 

ness of heaven not by the discord between it 
and the evils of our hearts, but by the sweet 
harmony into which it draws all our better feel- 
ings and thoughts. So, indeed, at the gate of 
Salem meets the soul after temptations its true 
Priest Melchizedek, both King and Priest, who 
brings forth bread and wine and blesses it in 
the Divine name. This true eternal Priest, who 
alone can refresh and bless the soul, is the Lord 
Jesus Christ. He is called^the Priest after the 
order of Melchizedek, for Melchizedek, who 
is both Priest and King, signifies the giver and 
dispenser of all heavenly goodness and of all 
heavenly truth. And those two elements of 
spiritual life — goodness and truth, or love and 
wisdom — are what make up the food of the 
soul ; they are the spiritual bread and wine 
with which the soul is refreshed by the Lord at 
the gate of Salem, the city of peace. 

Salem, afterwards called Jerusalem, and for 
evermore to be known to the Church as the New 
Jerusalem, means " Peace" ; and Abraham's 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 77 

return to Salem is the soul's entrance after a 
time of spiritual temptation into a state of 
heavenly peace and consolation. Melchizedek 
means " the king of righteousness/' and he 
is king of Salem ; therefore he represents 
the Lord as ruling over and abiding in this 
peaceful state of the soul by his Divine wis- 
dom ; or, in other \rords, by Melchizedek, the 
king of righteousness and of peace, is meant 
that peaceful and comforting influence of the 
Spirit of Truth as felt in the rational mind, that 
calm reliance, that firm and abiding faith in 
the Divine Truth, that clear perception of the 
goodness and beauty of the religious life. And 
by Melchizedek the Priest is meant the presence 
of the Lord in the mind as the dispenser of all 
heavenly love and goodness. For the Priest 
is the representative of the Lord as to the 
Divine goodness and mercy, while the King 
represents Him as to the Divine wisdom and 
justice. And, finally, by Melchizedek bringing 
forth bread and wine we have pictured to us 

7* 



78 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 

the actual nourishment which our souls, in 
those states of internal peace, receive chiefly 
from the Lord, as the Giver of all goodness 
and truth, of all charity and faith, thus of our 
spiritual bread and wine. 

Bread and wine are the natural elements 
corresponding to the two kinds of nourishment 
essential to the soul. The soul actually lives 
upon love and truth, or goodness and wisdom, 
in some of their various forms ; it lives upon 
these as derived from some source without 
itself, — from God, their only Giver. The soul 
does not live of itself any morethan the body 
has its nourishment in itself. 

By the Priest and King bringing forth bread 
and wine is clearly figured forth, therefore, the 
Lord as the Giver of all goodness and truth, 
feeding the human soul with these the elements 
of spiritual and immortal life. It is in the same 
sense that the Lord is called the Bread of life, 
the Bread of heaven, and also the Vine, and his 
Blood the cup. 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 79 

It is in this sense that even to-day the Lord 
our Saviour comes forth here at the gate of 
peace, our true Melchizedek, our everlasting 
Priest and King, and offers us the Bread of 
heaven and the Cup of salvation. 

It is his own Blood that He offers us as the 
wine of the soul, his own Body as the bread 
of eternal life. Because the Lord's glorious 
Divine Body is itself, in its primary and very 
substance, the essential Love and Wisdom from 
which are the life, substance, form, and exist- 
ence of all created things in heaven and on 
earth. 

This life-giving, soul-refreshing substance 
the Lord offers us for our actual appropriation, 
for our voluntary acceptance here amid the 
warfare and toil of our earthly bodily life. He 
condescends to come down into the plane of 
visible, tangible substance to offer these his 
Divine gifts under the form of earthly bread 
and wine, and Himself, the true Priest, to be 
represented by those his human servants who 



80 MELCHIZEDEICS OBLATION; OR, 

minister at the altar of his Church on earth. 
In this way, in the Sacrament of his own ap- 
pointment, He would declare to our natural 
senses, if necessary, the great truth that He 
alone is the Source of all Life and Blessing, 
and He would enable us, by actual partici- 
pation in this Holy Supper, to show forth in an 
equally real, visible manner our faith in Him 
as our Redeemer, our reliance upon Him as 
our Father, our remembrance of Him as our 
Saviour, our love for Him as our Priest, and 
our obedience to Him as our King. For when 
as the eternal Priest He had instituted his Holy 
Supper, then as our everlasting King He com- 
manded us, saying, "This do in remembrance 
of me." 

Let Christians, then, thankfully and with rev- 
erent hearts receive this spiritual bread and 
wine offered them under the form of a Sacra- 
ment by the true Jerusalem's Lord and King. 
It may be that we, too, come from the midst 
of conflict, our hearts soiled by too close com- 



THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 8 1 

mingling with the world, our spiritual energies 
faint and weary after long struggle against our 
besetting sins ; or, perhaps, slow and sluggish 
from long indifference and careless yielding to 
the evil. 

In any case, let us come with sober, thought- 
ful minds, carefully searching our hearts and 
secretly confessing our unworthiness to God. 
We must put the shoes from off our feet, for 
the place we are about to enter is a holy place. 
We must leave aside the cares of the world, 
and all earthly affections and thoughts. We 
must banish all warring anxieties from our 
minds and approach in heart the heavenly 
Salem, the city of peace. There thankfully 
and gladly let us wait upon the Lord ; confident 
that through the outward form of the Sacra- 
ment will be communicated to us that inward, 
invisible, but real grace which is the Bread and 
Wine of the soul, and in receiving which we are 
truly blessed in the name of the Lord. 



"V- 

«palum mx& ^Mnft in the 'gmA *f %Yxm\u\x\ m, 
ttoe Qxvxnt &&wUtx0\x$ of ®vutb U P*m 



And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and mens erv ants, and 
w omens erv ants, and gave them unto Abraham, and re- 
stored hi)n Sarah his wife. — Gen. xx. 14. 



THAT the Bible is man's only guide to faith 
and to salvation is a doctrine generally ac- 
knowledged among Christians. With too many 
professing to be Christians the whole matter 
ends with this acknowledgment ; neither faith 
nor salvation being with them concerns of such 
weighty and practical importance as to induce 
them often to resort to the only guide, however 
unquestioned its authority may be. Others, 
devout and earnest readers of the Divine Book, 
while entertaining a general belief in its sanc- 
tity and plenary inspiration, yet find in their own 

experience that it is only certain portions that 

82 



ABRAHAM AND SARAH, 83 

really afford them much direct information on 
spiritual subjects, and that even this much is 
of a nature quite different from the kind of 
instruction considered necessary in other de- 
partments of knowledge. It neither resembles 
the transcendental theories of the philosophers 
nor the angular and matter-of-fact dogmas of 
the theologian ; and the benefit derived from 
perusing this holy book of God's Truth is, ac- 
cordingly, experienced by most of this class of 
readers as being rather that which attends a 
devout and humble state of mind in waiting on 
the Lord than any definable amount of doc- 
trinal information. These persons, too, believe, 
and most rightly, that in having the merciful 
providence of God recalled to their minds by 
the histories of his wonderful dealings with 
his chosen people of old, and by the far more 
touching and eloquent record of his own 
blessed life on our earth and of the glorious re- 
demption wrought for all the children of men, 
the soul of the Christian is encouraged in its 



84 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

reliance upon the Divine mercy and in its hope 
for final deliverance from evil. Now, this out- 
side view of the Holy Word is not to be re- 
garded as a trivial one or as without its own 
degree of usefulness. The truth is, that far 
more depends upon the state of mind in which 
one comes to that Divine Fountain of Living 
Waters, than the amount of knowledge con- 
cerning its great depths of truth which one 
has, for the time being, stored safely up in 
the intellect. The hungry are filled with good 
things, and the rich are sent empty away. 

The sacred narrative relates how Abraham 
once journeyed southward with his wife Sarah 
until they came to Gerar. Arriving and so- 
journing here, Abraham fears that the men 
of that land desiring his wife, who was a 
woman fair to look upon, would slay him, her 
husband ; and, accordingly, he instructs Sarah 
to pass for his sister, and not his wife. Now, 
Abimelech, hearing that Sarah is the sister of 
Abraham, sends for her, meaning to take her 



THE LAND OF ABIMELECH 85 

to wife ; but the Lord warns him in a dream in 
the night that Sarah is already Abraham's wife, 
and commands that she be restored to her 
husband. Abimelech, rising up early in the 
morning, expostulates w T ith Abraham, and asks 
him why he allowed Sarah to go for his sister 
when she was his wife ; Abraham replies that 
he thought, " Surely the fear of God is not in 
this place ; and they will slay me for my wife ;" 
and, therefore, he begged his wife to say of 
him, into whatever place they should come, 
" He is my brother." Now, this was, indeed, 
true ; for Sarah was the daughter of Abraham's 
father, but not of his mother. And then fol- 
low these words, " And Abimelech took sheep, 
and oxen, and menservants, and womenser- 
vants, and gave them unto Abraham, and re- 
stored him Sarah his wife." 

Read in the sense of the letter, as the Chris- 
tian Church has hitherto alone been able to 
read this narrative, it appears in every way 
remarkable. As a guide to our conduct, 

8 



86 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

we would in nowise be justified in adopting it. 
As an instance of God's wise providence, it is, 
in its many literal aspects, utterly beyond our 
comprehension. Yet this is surely a part of 
that Word of God which alone can make us 
wise unto salvation. Just as much a part, just 
as essentially the Divine Word, the heaven- 
sent lamp to our feet, as the Lord's Sermon 
on the Mount, or the Parables of the Kingdom 
of Heaven. And when the diligent reader 
finds that the remarkable conduct displayed in 
this narrative is presented to us not once only, 
but three times in God's Word ; that Abraham 
when he sojourned in Egypt likewise published 
that Sarah was his sister and allured Pharaoh 
to take her from him, and that Isaac in the 
land of Abimelech did also suffer his wife Re- 
becca to be regarded as his sister, — when 
these three similar instances of such remark- 
able conduct are thus distinctly set before us, 
how can we account for the fact except on 
the hypothesis that there is a deeper signifi- 



THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 87 

cance contained therein than appears in the 
mere literal account ; that there is a spirit 
within which truly "maketh alive ,, this dead 
letter of historical narrative ? What a marvel- 
ous and at the same time most satisfying truth 
is that, then, which teaches us that one of the 
sublimest and holiest, and at the same time 
most practical, doctrines of Christianity is here, 
under the veil of history, presented to our 
minds ! Who can but wonder, and feel as one 
dazzled by the break of day upon a world of 
darkness, when he learns that in this narrative 
is minutely described a passage of the inner his- 
tory of our Saviour's life in the flesh ? I say 
" inner history," for it pictures that development 
of his mind, that gradual changing of his spir- 
itual nature by which He was casting off the 
material and mortal and putting on the pa- 
ternal and the Divine which was to glorify 
Him fully with the Father's glory. These 
things, deep and mysterious, in our Saviour's 
history are nowhere told in the letter of the 



88 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

Holy Word, whether in Gospel, in Psalm, in 
Moses, or the Prophets. But in the spiritual 
sense of all these books is recorded for our 
edification and our guidance to heaven all 
the marvelous history of our Lord's inner life 
while in the world. 

Now, if we would read this narrative in its 
spiritual sense, we must know what is the sig- 
nificance of the persons and places mentioned 
therein. As regards the persons, Abraham rep- 
resents the Lord Himself as the Divine Good 
and also the Divine Humanity ; accordingly, 
both the essential Divinity and the humanity 
assumed by it for the purpose of Redemption. 
Sarah, as his wife, represents Divine Truth con- 
joined with Divine Good, made one with it in 
the Divine Life, which is the Divine Proceed- 
ing. Sarah, as Abraham's sister, represents 
rational truth, or truth entertained from the 
reason only, and accordingly not in its essence 
conjoined and made one with the life of love. 
Abimelech, the king of Gerar, represents one 



THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 89 

receptive of the doctrine of faith ; and Gerar, 
or the land of the Philistines southward, signi- 
fies a state of intelligence in matters of faith 
and doctrine. Abraham's journeying south- 
ward, then, and abiding in the land of the 
Philistines, in Gerar, denotes the Lord in his 
assumed humanity while receiving instruction 
in spiritual doctrine, which instruction was 
alone from the Divinity within Him. 

Seeing now the spiritual significance of those 
persons and places, let us read the narrative 
anew, and observe what lesson in spiritual 
matters is here imparted to us. Our Lord, we 
thus learn, when He comes into the perception 
of spiritual truth, and is storing his mind with 
the doctrine of faith, although as the Divine 
Father He knows that all truth must be of celes- 
tial origin, and can live only when ultimated in 
charity; still, as the Son born into the world in 
our nature, in order that his mind may be devel- 
oped in truly human order, He first regards 
truth merely as rational truth, — that is, as truth 



9° ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

that can be reasoned out, be constructed in 
man's own intelligence, and thus belong to the 
intellect as its own. While in the doctrines of 
faith, that is to say, in a believing, receptive 
state of mind, He as Abimelech sends for 
Sarah. But Sarah is no longer the wife, that 
is, truth married to goodness ; but, on the con- 
trary, she is regarded simply as the sister, as 
truth, to be rationally received in the mind, 
and there to remain unmarried to any good, 
and related to good only as a sister to a brother. 
And thus Sarah — rational truth — comes to and 
is received in his mind. But the truth of faith 
is not thus always held as mere rational truth 
in the Lord's mind. The Divinity within Him 
after a season warns Him that this truth prop- 
erly belongs to charity, and should be united 
to charity as its lawful mate; that it is a crime 
and an offense against the heavenly law of 
marriage that Divine truth should be held apart 
in the mind as mere rational intelligence, and 
not united to the affections of the will, and thus 



THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 9 1 

become one Divine and perfect life, fruitful in 
the offspring of righteousness and good works. 
The Lord, warned in this manner, as Abime- 
lech is described as being warned in the night 
in a dream, comes now into a state wherein He 
clearly perceives that truth of faith is of celes- 
tial and not merely intellectual origin ; that it 
really comes from the Divine Love, in its origin, 
and must be restored to unity with it; that 
while it seemed, when first received, to be 
merely the outgrowth of the human intellect, 
and thus quite independent of the will, now 
it proves to be verily Sarah, the married wife 
of Abraham, or that celestial truth which exists 
only in union with the Divine Love, and thus 
alone brings forth the offspring of charity and 
good works. Then the Lord, still as Abimelech 
in the doctrine of faith, takes oxen, and sheep, 
and menservants, and womenservants, and 
gives them unto Abraham, and restores to 
him Sarah his wife. Perceiving as He does, 
through his Divine enlightenment, that all the 



92 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

truths in his intellect come from the love of 
God as their source, He willingly restores 
them to their owner, regards them as one w T ith 
and inseparable from the life of charity, and, 
together with this acknowledgment, He renders 
up to this Supreme Love, to the control of this 
marriage union of goodness and truth, all the 
lower and subservient qualities of his mind; 
all his natural affections and natural thoughts, 
all the goodness He possesses, all the truth He 
possesses, whether natural or rational, He now 
gratefully renders up to that Divine and Su- 
preme Master, his own Divinity, the indwelling 
Father, and thus from being human He be- 
comes Divine, and by this process of his glori- 
fication He is made not only our Saviour in 
time, but our great Pattern and Guide to all 
eternity in the work of our regeneration. 

A remarkable illustration occurs in this nar- 
rative of the correspondence, or signification, 
of Scripture names. We have seen that Abra- 
ham represents the Lord when receiving in- 



THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 93 

struction in spiritual doctrine. So far as He is 
regarded as journeying into the southern land 
and abiding there this is the case ; but when his 
first rational reception of doctrinal truths is 
referred to, the signification is at once trans- 
ferred from Abraham to Abimelech. Abraham 
then represents the Lord God in his celestial 
degree, or as to the Divine Good ; Abimelech 
the king represents the Lord first receiving 
the truths in matters of doctrine as merely 
rational, while He was on earth and his hu- 
manity not yet glorified. And so again Sarah, 
as we have seen, represents, as the wife of 
Abraham, the Divine Truth united to Divine 
Love, or the spiritual and celestial natures of 
God conjoined. As the sister of Abraham, in 
which character she was sought by Abimelech 
for his wife, Sarah represents rational truth, 
which is addressed to the intellect only, and 
not yet conjoined with any affection of the will. 
We may now, too, gain some idea of the mean- 
ing of those other narratives which describe 



94 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

the similar conduct of Abraham with his wife 
in Egypt, and of Isaac with his wife in this same 
land of Gerar. Why did Abraham twice deny 
his wife Sarah and allow her to be regarded as 
his sister, once in Egypt and once in Gerar ? 
And why, again, is Isaac related to have once 
done the same ? The answer to these ques- 
tions is, in brief, thus: that our Lord, in assum- 
ing our human nature, underwent, as to his 
humanity, the same kind of mental and spiritual 
development that man undergoes ; conse- 
quently, the various degrees of his mind were 
opened not all at once, but successively, and 
according to an eternally established Divine 
Order. Now, all the truth that the mind re- 
ceives may be distinguished into various grades 
or kinds, and so, likewise, is the mind itself 
capable of a corresponding progressive devel- 
opment, each degree of the mind being fitted 
to the reception of its own degree of truth. 
These degrees we may call in their order, be- 
ginning at the lowest, the sensual, or scientific, 



THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 95 

the rational, the spiritual, and the celestial. 
Now, because this is the Divine order, — that 
order into which man is created, and by which 
he alone can become regenerated, — therefore, 
when our Lord assumed our common humanity 
that He might glorify it and make it Divine, 
his own mind underwent this same gradual 
and successive development His being first 
instructed in mere sensual knowledge, or 
scientifics, is what is meant by Abraham's so- 
journing in Egypt ; and that He, who in his 
indwelling Divinity was all Truth and all 
Goodness Himself, might yet, in this assumed 
humanity, enter into the experience of our 
common boyhood and, as a boy, learn, with 
avidity, and for the mere sake of learning, 
without any regard to the uses of charity, the 
knowledge of material science, — therefore is 
Abraham said to deny his wife and to give 
Sarah as his sister to Pharaoh, king of Egypt. 
Thus is that universal law of Divine Providence 
illustrated, that, although all truth, even in the 



96 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

degree of sensuous or scientific knowledge, is 
truly Divine, and exists in its origin in eternal 
marriage with the Divine Love ; still, in order 
that it may be adapted to our as yet unregen- 
erate and natural minds, it takes for the time 
the appearance of being merely sensual and 
material, the demonstration of our five senses, 
and neither Divine nor human, but simply 
" matter of fact," as we say, and capable of 
being learned by us regardless of any motive 
of charity or use, and solely for our selfish 
gratification. So, after the law of his own 
merciful providence, did our Saviour, when a 
boy, refuse to learn sensuous truth as spiritual, 
but rather made his humanity like ours by 
learning the truths of science in the Egyptian 
land, just as we must, from purely natural 
ends, and receiving it in the natural, scientific 
plane of the mind only. Nevertheless, Pharaoh 
did not take Sarah to wife, but restored her to 
Abraham, no longer as his sister, but as his 
married wife. This teaches that our Lord, 



THE LAND OF A BLUE LECH 97 

when He had fully acquired his instruction in 
scientific things, perceived, by intuition from 
the Divinity within Himself, that the truth He 
had learned was not given for its own sake, 
but that it truly belonged, as a spouse, to the 
love of use in the will, that to this love it should 
be given up, and thus rendered fruitful and a 
living good to all mankind ; and also by this 
recognition of Sarah as Abraham's wife is 
implied the acknowledgment that all truth, 
even the scientific, has its celestial origin in the 
Divine Mind alone. But in the narrative which 
we are to-day considering, the Lord is described 
as being instructed in another higher kind of 
truth. It is no longer in Egypt, but in the 
land of the Philistines, that Abraham and Sarah 
now sojourn. That the Divine Love and the 
Divine Wisdom are now contemplated no 
longer in things of science, but in the doc- 
trinals of faith ; for the land of the Philistines 
represents those who are in those doctrinals ; 
and here again Sarah, or the spiritual Truth 
e 9 



98 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

of God, is not at first regarded as the wife of 
Abraham, — that is, as the Divine Truth in con- 
junction with the Divine Love, and forming- 
one with it, — but rather as only the sister, as 
mere rational truth, the outgrowth of the intel- 
ligence and the possession of the understand- 
ing alone, independent altogether of the heart. 
But here, again, Abimelech is warned of God 
in a dream, and gives up Sarah, restoring her 
to Abraham as his wife ; teaching us that the 
Lord, in this stage of his education, after once 
imbibine the truths of faith as mere rational 
truths, then, by the intuition from the Divinity 
within Him, comes into clear perception that 
these truths also, the matters of spiritual 
doctrine, of faith, and of religion, are only 
barren and dead when entertained in the in- 
tellect as rationalities alone, and that in order 
that they may bring forth the fruits of good 
living, they must first be restored to their 
marriage-union with the affections of the will, 
and at the same time their celestial origin 



THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 99 

acknowledged to be the very Divine Will 
itself. 

In regard to Isaac, who, in the land of Abim- 
elech, passed off his wife Rebecca as his sister, 
we are taught that he represents the Lord, not 
like Abraham as to his celestial nature, but as 
to his rational nature. Now, Isaac did not, 
like Abraham, go down into Egypt, and, con- 
sequently, only once presented his wife as 
his sister, and that in the land of the Philis- 
tines ; and this means that the rational plane 
of the Lord's mind was kept above and distinct 
from the sensuous or scientific plane (repre- 
sented by Egypt), and yet that this rational 
plane receives Divine Truth, first, only as ra- 
tional, and that afterwards, by perception, it 
acknowledges that it is spiritual, that is, that it 
forms one with the Divine Love. In these 
three instances, then, we see the following pro- 
gression of spiritual states : First, Pharaoh, in 
Egypt, takes Sarah as Abraham's sister, mean- 
ing to make her his wife ; this is the natural de- 



100 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

sire in the youthful mind for sensuous or scien- 
tific knowledge, without regard to its celestial 
origin or its true use ; by the wife restored to 
Abraham is meant the acknowledgment of the 
Divine Truth and of the holy use of charity in 
the plane of scientific learning. Secondly, Abim- 
elech desires Sarah as the sister, not the wife, 
of Abraham, in the land of the Philistines. 
Here the spiritual man, in the doctrines of faith, 
desires rational truth, and accepts truth only as, 
or because it is, rational, But Abimelech also 
restores Sarah the wife to her husband, denot- 
ing that all the truths of faith, although received 
first as rationalities, must yet, in the end, be 
acknowledged to be Divine, and to belong only 
to charity in the will as their proper vivifier and 
counterpart. Finally, Abimelech, discovering 
Rebecca to be the wife, and not the sister, of 
Isaac, in the land of the Philistines, denotes that 
those in the doctrines of faith perceive ulti- 
mately that even in the rational plane of the 
mind rational truth is not sufficient of itself, 



THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. IOI 

but must be conjoined to rational goodness, 
and these both acknowledged to be Divine. 

These are profound mysteries ; so profound 
that it is almost in vain that we venture to ex- 
plore them ever so slightly, for at most we can 
obtain but a glimpse into these vast expanses 
and fathomless depths of Divine wisdom which 
lie concealed beneath the letter of God's Holy 
Word. But we should take care not only lest 
we regard the entire narrative as in itself trivial 
and unprofitable, but also that when we learn 
of all these subtle distinctions and nice grades 
of meaning in the internal sense, we do not 
also look upon these with indifference and deem 
them too obscure and too profound for our 
daily wants in this mundane life. 

Says Swedenborg regarding the important 
teachings contained in these and similar pas- 
sages, " To the man whose interest and whose 
heart are engrossed in worldly and fleshly 
things these truths seem trivial, and as if con- 
ducive to no good whatever ; but to the angels, 

9* 



102 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

whose interest and affections are in celestial 
and spiritual things, these truths are most 
precious ; their ideas and perceptions of them 
are ineffable. Wherein it appears that many 
things trivial to man because transcending his 
intelligence are most highly esteemed by the 
angels, because they enter into the light of 
the angels' wisdom. " (A. C. 2540.) And now 
if any one, acknowledging the profundity of 
this narrative, is yet inclined in his own mind 
to ask what is the practical lesson addressed, in 
it, to us in the midst of our various worldly 
pursuits and labors, I think the question may be 
answered in a few words. The lesson is this : 
that in the natural and unregenerate state with 
which we are born we are not capable of re- 
ceiving any truth from the Lord at once as 
spiritual or Divine truth ; and if we were 
capable of receiving it in its holy and celestial 
character, while we remain the wicked beings 
that we are, we should only be constantly pro- 
faning and adulterating it, and thus closing our 



THE LAND OF AB1MELECH. 1 03 

minds against all heavenly and divine influ- 
ences, and accordingly turning this precious 
gift of God into the very instrument of our 
spiritual ruin. This being the case, the Lord 
mercifully provides that inasmuch as we cannot 
learn truth in its real nature, we may learn it 
under appearances adapted to our low states. 
In youth, we learn the sensuous or scientific 
truths, which, indeed, are only apparent and de- 
ceptive, but still are all the truths that we are 
capable of receiving. We have to regard our 
senses as the only reliable guides to knowledge: 
we have to think of God as a King or Father, 
ruling a kingdom, somewhere in space, and as 
feeling kindly toward us when we do well, and 
angry when we do wickedly ; we cannot yet 
conceive of any real spiritual attributes, or of 
spiritual existence ; consequently, our ideas of 
God and of heaven are only sensuous ones, — 
that is, formed after the nature of the knowl- 
edges obtained through our senses. Now, 
supposing that these apparent truths were 



IC4 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 

taken away from the child and he had only to 
conceive of God as He really is in his spir- 
itual nature and Divine infinity and perfection, 
what would become of the child's notion of 
God, and consequently of religion, of obed- 
ience, of heaven, and the life to come ? And 
so, also, when we come to mature age and be- 
gin to look at things from the rational plane of 
our minds, then the truths of faith are presented 
first as rational truths ; they are regarded, 
studied, received, or rejected, only as rational, 
or as addressed to the reason, and not to the 
will of man. As yet we have no perception 
of them as spiritual truths. This perception 
comes only from a life of obedience to the 
truths of doctrine after they have been intel- 
lectually received and approved. Supposing 
that no one of these holy truths of the Lord's 
own wisdom were implanted in our minds, or 
obtainable by our intellectual effort until we 
could perceive its Divine origin and nature, and 
could at once receive it with our affections and 



THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 1 05 

act it out in the life from a pure love of the 
truth itself, how many truths could we in 
our sinful earthly condition thus receive? 

Therefore it is that God in his mercy pro- 
vides that w r e may learn truths before we love 
them, that we may accept intellectually or 
rationally the doctrines of religion, and live in 
accordance with them, from simple motives of 
obedience, or for the sake of honor and gain, 
while yet we have little or no perception of 
their spiritual character and of the holy mar- 
riage which must exist between these truths 
and the affections of our wills before they can 
bring us into the heavenly life. Thus the 
Lord, as Abraham, allows the Divine Truth, 
which in Him exists only in heavenly marriage 
with the Divine Love, to appear to our minds 
not as Sarah the wife, but as Sarai the sister, — 
that is, not as the spiritual truth which it really 
is, but as the rational truth which it apparently 
is. But like Pharoah and like Abimelech, if 
we will not be utterly destroyed for the great 



lo6 ABRAHAM AND SARAH. 



crime of profanation of that which is holy and 
belongs to the Lord alone, we must, in due 
time, restore this truth to its celestial origin, in 
the ackowledgment of its spiritual and real 
nature ; and holding all our sensual, all our 
rational knowledges and affections in obedience 
and in subjection to this truth, now perceived 
to be Divine, we must make it our living faith, 
by uniting with it all the purposes and motives 
of our life, and thus render it one with charity. 
Thus, like Abimelech, we shall have followed 
the Divine instruction ; we shall have taken 
" sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and 
womenservants, and given them unto Abra- 
ham, and restored to him Sarah his wife." And 
then, too, offering up to our heavenly Father, 
the Giver of all goodness and truth, our whole 
hearts and minds in a life of devout and faith- 
ful obedience to his commands, we may say 
unto Him in grateful prayer, as said Abimelech 
unto Abraham, " Behold, my land is before 
thee : dwell where it pleaseth thee. " 



"VI. 



Sxipnfri &tiu™ ** \ttx QMgkutt; ox, i\\t £tibvc&»fAtt\\ 
oi the 3Uti0ttal. 



And the angel of the Lord said -unto her, Return to thy 
mistress, and submit thyself under her hands. — Gen. 
xvi. 9. 

THE woman who talked with the Saviour by 
the well in Samaria, when she went thence, 
said to her acquaintance that she had seen a 
man who had told her all the things that ever 
she did, and asked, Is not this the Christ ? 

In like manner we come in our day to draw 
water from the deep well of Divine truth. We 
open the sacred volume which we call holy 
and regard as holy more from custom, perhaps, 
than from genuine appreciation of its character. 
We read a simple, ancient tale, savoring of a 
far-distant clime and of an age long past. In 
the literal story itself, majestic even to the 

107 



ioS HA GAR'S RETURN 

sublime as is its sad and touching style, there 
is yet nothing that distinctly marks it as Divine, 
or that conveys to the superficial reader any 
spiritual lesson. And yet if, searching its 
interior depths, we should come upon a revela- 
tion of the things of our own heart ; if we should 
find here unfolded those secrets of our inner 
experience which no human eye has ever 
penetrated, no human ear heard uttered ; if 
within this Holy Scripture, beneath the natural 
imagery of the letter, we should find a record 
telling, indeed, of our spiritual or inward life, 
all the things that ever we did, then, astonished 
at this more than human wisdom and insight 
into the heart of man, shall we not say, with the 
Samaritan woman, Come and see ! is not this 
the Christ ? Shall we not behold, in the won- 
drous truth revealed out of the depths of the 
sacred Scriptures, that Word which, in the Be- 
ginning, was with God and was God, — that 
Word, indeed, which, now being unfolded to 
man in its interior and its spiritual meaning, is 



TO HER MISTRESS. 109 

none other than the Christ, the Messiah which 
was for to come ? 

It goes for little, in this our day of daring 
speculation and unreined denial and dispute, 
to declare to men that the Bible is indeed true, 
and the very Word of God ; that it is the con- 
necting link between the minds of all rational 
beings in the natural and spiritual worlds; that it 
contains three senses, — the natural, or earthly, 
which is the sense of the letter ; the inner, or 
spiritual, which treats of spiritual substances, 
experiences, and states; and, lastly, a celestial, 
or inmost sense, treating of the Lord, and the 
purest essence or end of being. One word of 
doubt or denial from the external sensuous 
reason of man is more powerful than all the 
arguments which can be brought to him on the 
plane in which he reasons. So no mere rumor 
or announcement of the Divinity of Christ 
affected the belief of either Jew or Samaritan 
regarding Him. The Samaritan woman doubt- 
less mistook her Redeemer for a common way- 

10 



IIO HAGARS RETURN 

farer. The secret He told her out of her own 
life declared to her his Divine omniscience; and 
she went away, asking, Is not this the Christ? 
And when men at this day, even they who 
treat the sacred volume familiarly, with the air 
of truth-seekers at life's wayside, examining 
with a kind of condescension this wayfaring 
Son of man, when they are told the thing which 
no human voice could speak, no discrimination 
of human friend, or foe, could pry out of the 
secret depths of the actual experience of life, 
then may these do well to pause reverently in 
this mysterious presence, to remember that it 
is alone the Messiah which is to come, which is 
called Christ, who will thus tell us all things ; 
and not a few have felt the Divine voice say- 
ing, by a powerful intuition, which they cannot 
resist, "I that speak unto thee am He." 

It is, indeed, true that the whole Bible tells 
in its inner sense the experiences of the human 
soul. But there are few passages that appeal 
so directly to the mind of so-called rationalistic 



TO HER MISTRESS. Ill 

or free-thinking men as does this same strik- 
ingly beautiful figure presented in the story of 
Haear. How little would the reader of the 
mere letter imagine what a depth of the human 
experience of our day lies concealed in this 
picture of Hagar sitting by a fountain in the 
wilderness, in the way to Shur ! 

Let us take a hasty glance at the literal 
narrative itself. 

Sarai, Abram's wife, has borne him no child. 
She gives him her Egyptian handmaid, Ha- 
gar, to be his wife. But Hagar, when she 
had conceived, despised her mistress ; and 
Sarai seeing that she is despised in the eyes 
of the handmaid, sends Hagar away into the 
wilderness. And there Hagar, sitting by a 
fountain of waters, is comforted by the angel 
of the Lord, who commands her to return to 
her mistress and submit herself to her. He 
promises that she shall bear a son, whose name 
shall be Ishmael. And this one shall be a wild 
man. His hand will be against every man, 



112 HA GAR'S RETURN 

and every man's hand against him. And 
Hagar called that place the " Well of Him that 
liveth and seeth me," — " Beer-lahai-roi." 

And now let us as hastily glance at the 
spiritual meaning of these personages. 

Abram signifies the internal man, or that 
part of our human nature which draws its life 
directly from the Divine source of all life, and 
which is separated by a discreet degree from all 
merely natural, bodily sense and thought. In 
a good sense, therefore, Abram represents the 
spiritual man as to his will or affection of 
good ; and Sarai the internal man as to faith or 
affection of truth ; especially does Sarai, as 
contrasted with Hagar, represent that faith or 
firm belief in spiritual and revealed truths 
which comes from a love of such truths and 
the good they teach ; for this is the union with 
Abram which Sarai his wife enjoys. Sarai, 
the wife of Abram, is that truth which is ad- 
joined to the goodness of this internal or spir- 
itual man. She represents, therefore, spiritual 



TO HER MISTRESS. 1 1 3 

or intellectual truth as distinct from mere sen- 
suous or scientific knowledge. And Hagar, 
the Egyptian handmaid, represents the life of 
the external or natural man, and its affections 
for natural, materialistic science, or those kinds 
of knowledge which we derive through the 
senses from the external world. We have in 
these three characters, therefore, a representa- 
tion of the powers and agencies of every man's 
mind. For every man's mind, or intellectual na- 
ture, possesses an internal, or spiritual part, and 
external, or sensuous part ; and between these 
a third plane or degree, which partakes of both 
the spiritual and sensuous and in a sense unites 
them, and this is the rational faculty, or the 
plane of the reason. And as we have seen 
Abram and Sarai typify the spiritual plane of 
the mind, in which reside the affections of good 
and the truths of faith, Hagar, as a hand- 
maid, represents the natural, or sensuous plane 
of the mind, whose office is to serve the higher 
faculties by the acquisition of scientific knowl- 

10* 



114 HAGARS RETURN 

edge. She personifies the love of sciences 
and knowledges. Egypt itself represents the 
whole plane of scientific knowledge. That land 
has always been regarded in secular history 
as the mother of the physical and exact 
sciences. 

But what shall we say of the intermediate, 
or rational plane of the mind ? What is it 
that typifies this ? It is precisely to the origin 
and office of the rational plane of the mind 
that the narrative we are considering mainly 
refers. For nothing else is treated of in the 
internal sense of this passage in the story of 
Haear than the birth or formation in the mind 
of the rational faculty. It is easy to see that 
the reason stands midway between the mere 
senses of the body and the knowledge they 
acquire on the lower side, and, above, the per- 
ceptions or spiritual knowledges of the soul. 
Now, all life, properly speaking, comes from 
within. Life descends as love or affection from 
the inmost chamber of our being, and inspires 



TO HER MISTRESS. I I 5 

and animates the lower planes of the mind, 
all our sensuous and bodily faculties and all 
the ideas or knowledges we take in from the 
outer world. It is by the union of the internal 
life, the spiritual principle of the internal man, 
with the bare and otherwise lifeless acquisitions 
of the outer mind, that there is formed what 
we call the reason. Mere knowledge, mere 
facts, stored up in the memory is not reason. 
But the love of knowledge and of acquiring 
scientific truths, which belongs to every man 
by nature, and which resides in the outermost 
part of the mind, — almost in the senses them- 
selves, — this love of knowing must be infused 
with the higher and interior principles of the 
spiritual mind in order for a truly rational 
faculty to be produced. And this union be- 
tween the life of the spiritual and that of the 
external, or scientific mind is what is typified 
by the union of Abram and Hagar, his Egyp- 
tian handmaid. From this union there pro- 
ceeds that rational faculty, which is also typified 



Il6 HAGAR' S RETURN 

by Ishmael, the son which Hagar bore to 
Abram. 

We see now what elements of our common 
human nature are here placed before us as in 
an allegory, and personified by the various 
actors upon this stage of ancient and divinely 
constructed history. How eagerly and with 
what delight have men traced in the writing 
of a Shakspeare, a Dante, or a Bunyan, the un- 
derlying portrayal of our common human attri- 
butes and internal experience ! But what shall 
we, in comparison, say of a sublime allegory 
like the one here presented to us in the story 
of Hagar and Ishmael, — an allegory which 
ceases to be allegory, and becomes veritably 
eternal reality and truth, — when we find that 
it is conceived by no mere human imagination, 
but by that wisdom of Him only who search- 
eth the heart and veins, from whom no secrets 
are hid, and to whom every thought and emo- 
tion of every human soul stands out in clear 
daylight, and is spoken as upon the house-top ! 



TO HER MISTRESS. 1 17 

The first experience of the mind after ac- 
quiring the common facts pertaining to mere 
bodily existence, is the formation of the reason. 
The infant, the child, does not reason, but acts 
like the animal, from instinct. Gradually with 
the increase of knowledge there develops this 
higher faculty in which man is, as it were, to 
become master of his knowledge and of all his 
faculties ; thus to be no longer impelled by 
mere animal impulse or automatic instinct, but 
to choose, determine, and act from his own 
free judgment. It is evident that man's 
freedom consists in this, his having a reason 
whereby he may form his own conclusions and 
judgments. The brute has no freedom really, 
because it is impelled only by an instinct 
implanted in its nature. Man having free- 
dom, can yield to or resist these similar animal 
impulses at his pleasure or will. And when 
the child grows to the years of discretion, or 
mature reason, then we call him free, and no 
longer a child, but a man. We see here the 



Il8 HAGAR'S RETURN 

wisdom of the Creator, in that He has provided 
for the birth and growth of the rational faculty 
in man as the essential condition to all progress 
and happiness. But there is not a single gift 
of God to man which man may not, if he will, 
pervert and apply to improper ends. It is so 
with this sublime, this noble gift of reason. 
And since the will of man is what gives direc- 
tion to all his conduct and what determines 
the use he will make of all his faculties, and 
since the will is, in our present condition, 
selfish, earthly, and inclined to sin, therefore 
the reason has become enslaved with the rest 
of the faculties, and instead of being the bold, 
courageous torch -bearer, leading us up to 
higher light and liberty, it plays the cowardly 
part of excusing our fleshly weaknesses and 
endeavoring to glorify the miserable creatures 
of our depravity and our spiritual blindness. 
The reason was given us to be indeed the step 
from earthly to spiritual science, to be the fruit 
of the marriage between Abram and Hagar, 



TO HER All STRESS. 119 

between the soul and the bodily sense. But, 
alas ! the inner affection of the will which gives 
the reason its life is no longer pure and 
heavenly. It is fallen and corrupt. It is the 
father of lies, and the reason languishes under 
its tyranny. There is but one deliverance 
possible, and this does not lie in the mere 
facts of earthly science, the so-called " positive 
science," which men nowadays are so set upon 
acquiring. All this is dead and useless unless 
inspired by some higher, nobler end or motive 
of the heaven-born soul, — unless it becomes 
one with the faith and religion which makes up 
the life of the spiritual man. And for this all- 
enlivening, all-comprehending, all-reconciling 
spirit, this ransomer of our reason from the 
bonds of sensualism, this deliverer of our im- 
mortal souls from the grave of mere dead 
science, we must look to God, the Source of 
all Truth, and to his Revelation, and thus we 
shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall 
make us free. 



120 HA GAR'S RETURN 

So soon as Ishmael is conceived Hagar be- 
gins to despise her mistress. The first and 
natural impulse of the rational faculty on com- 
ing to consciousness in the mind is, to de- 
spise the things of faith and the facts of spiritual 
existence. The reason rejoices in independ- 
ence, in absolute self-direction. Like the 
youth just entering upon manhood, it rejoices 
in its sense of freedom from all parental re- 
straint ; it is proud in its ability and its right 
to judge and determine for itself. Hagar de- 
spises her mistress Sarai. The age of the 
world we now live in would seem to be that of 
this newly-conceived, proud and defiant reason. 
The shackles of traditional faith, the tutelage 
of the past in things not of politics and physi- 
cal science only, but in matters of religious 
faith as well, seem to have been thrown off. 
The human race would seem to be entering a 
new, vigorous stage of early manhood. Science 
and a love of science is now the chief object 
of its favor. Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid, 



TO HER MISTRESS. 121 

is installed in the place of Sarai, the rightful 
mistress of the household. And Sarai is de- 
spised in her eyes. Not only are the things 
of traditional faith lightly esteemed by the 
popular opinion of our day, but spiritual mo- 
tives and principles of any kind, yea, the ex- 
istence of a spiritual or supernatural world, 
is regarded by many as only the fancy of 
dreamers and sentimentalists, and as things of 
little or no practical importance, whether real 
or not. The incipient reason released from 
the shackles of ignorance and superstition 
begins with despising the things of faith and 
religion. Happy is he in whom the reason, 
having thus begun, does not also end with this! 
And what is the character of this Ishmael 
when born ? " He will be," says the sacred 
text, " a wild man ; his hand will be against 
every man, and every man's hand against 
him." How truly does this describe the newly 
born, unfettered reason of man ! Its nature 
is to combat ; to contest commonly accepted 

F II 



122 HA GAR'S RETURN 

theories ; to deny, to argue, to dispute. Its 
first attitude toward any truth it meets is hos- 
tile, defiant. It stands with a drawn sword 
at the entrance of the mind to ward off mere 
dogmatic or traditional assertions. Its hand is 
against every man's, and ever)' man's hand is 
regarded with suspicion, as if directed against 
its own freedom. It is as a wild man. 

But it is of the Divine Providence that the 
reason, when first developed in man, should 
thus be left to its free and independent course. 
It must learn by experience what is its true 
use and position in the mind. And if it reaps 
desolation and unhappy, selfish solitude as the 
reward of its universal doubting and deny- 
ing of what others believe, and are happy in 
believing, then will- it the more freely and 
earnestly seek the protection and the guidance 
of some higher authority, of some higher faculty 
than itself. This higher faculty is faith ; the 
higher authority is the spiritual truth residing 
in the internal man. It is Sarai, Hagar's 



TO HER MISTRESS. 1 23 

rightful mistress. And the voice of the Lord 
uttered in the still depths of the stricken con- 
science is that of the angel, saying to Hagar 
at the fountain, " Whither wilt thou go ? Re- 
turn to thy mistress, and submit thyself under 
her hands. " 

For the natural mind having rejected its 
faith in spiritual truth and despised it, will be 
found like Hagar, sitting at the fountain in the 
wilderness, in the way to Shur. Shur is a land 
bordering on Egypt, and the fountain of water 
is that kind of merely natural or scientific 
knowledge in which the mind of the unbeliever 
seeks to stay itself. But it is a fountain in 
the wilderness at best, and he who sits there is 
an afflicted one. Mere science without faith is 
as dead as the body of man without the soul ; 
it is a universe without God ; it may give meat 
and drink to mere bodily appetite, but leaves 
the immortal soul famishing for food. 

O desolate and troubled soul ! who hast 
rejected in scorn thy faith in God's Word and 



124 HA GAR'S RETURN TO HER MISTRESS. 

Kingdom, and sought to live upon the poor 
crusts of merely earthly lore and riches, return 
to thy mistress, and submit thyself to her ! 
Return to that faith which is the only light and 
enduring comfort of all that is truly human 
and immortal in thee ! Think not that this is 
to sacrifice thy reason. It is alone what will 
make the reason free in the eternal truth, and 
make it the master rather than the mere slave 
of a corrupt and fallen will. For the voice 
that said to Hagar " Return/' uttered also the 
sure promise that " Ishmael shall be born, and 
his seed shall multiply exceedingly." And 
for a perpetual memorial of this voice of the 
Spirit warning thee out of the still but aw T ful 
depths of the Divine Word, call this place in 
thy life's history Beer-lahai-roi, — u The well of 
Him that liveth and seeth me," 



"VII- 
f#ttffl?t*l tttiwcA to i^ife; ox, the ^irmtnal iUaflm. 



And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water ; 
and she went, and Jilted the bottle with water, and gave 
the lad drink. — Gen. xxi. 19. 



THE story of Hagar and Ishmael is one 
of those Divine allegories with which the 
sacred Scripture abounds. It is remarkable 
as being that one which the Apostle Paul es- 
pecially designates as such, indicating at the 
same time in a brief but grand outline some- 
thing of the spiritual meaning underlying the 
literal narrative. " For it is written, that Abra- 
ham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, 
the other by a freewoman. But he who was 
of the bondwoman was born after the flesh ; 
but he of the freewoman was by promise. 
Which things are an allegory : for these are 



11* 125 



126 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 

the two covenants ; the one from the mount 
Sinai which gendereth to bondage, which is 
Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Ara- 
bia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, 
and is in bondage with her children. But Jeru- 
salem which is above is free, which is the 
mother of us all." — Gal. iv. 22-26. 

Viewed in the light of the spiritual sense, 
we behold here certain persons acting out as 
in a drama what goes on in the mind of every 
religious man. Hagar is the type of the 
purely natural love of knowledge, or that af- 
fection for learning which is born with every 
one, and which shows itself among the first 
traits developed in early childhood. Ishmael, 
the son which Hagar bore to Abram, repre- 
sents the reason ; for this faculty is born of the 
union of the natural love of knowledge with 
the interior or spiritual life of the soul. Ani- 
mals know a great many things as perfectly 
as men do, but their knowledge remains only 
knowledge ; it does not become reason, as it is 



THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 27 

itself never the result of any analytical thought, 
and this because it is not united with any 
spiritual desire or purpose. Man has two 
natures, or two planes of the mind, in which 
he receives life from God, and is conscious of 
it as his own life. The higher plane is the 
spiritual, the lower the natural. Thus he lives 
two lives, — one in the spiritual world, the other 
in the natural world. In his spiritual mind 
he is aware of spiritual things, — such as the 
truth of revelation ; for instance, he knows and 
thinks about God, about his duty, about the 
life after death, about heaven and hell ; in his 
natural mind he is aware of natural earthly 
things, — thus, his bodily wants, earthly riches 
and comforts, and the various occupations and 
sciences which relate to getting these things. 
Now when the knowledges of the spirit and the 
knowledges of the senses are united they give 
birth to another, middle plane of the mind, 
which is the rational. Here resides the rea- 
son, — midway, we may say, between soul and 



128 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 

body, between religious faith and natural 
science. The reason is intended to unite the 
two, or is rather the effect of these being united. 
Through the reason the light of religion, of 
our spiritual nature, — thus, of faith and of con- 
science, — may come down into the acts and 
motives of our bodily life. 

We have seen that when Ishmael is first 
conceived then Hagar his mother despises 
Sarai, Abram's true wife and her own right- 
ful mistress. Sarai is faith, or the spiritual 
truth, and by her being despised by her hand- 
maid Hagar is represented the light esteem, 
yea, the contempt, in which the things of faith 
are held when the reason, typified by Ishmael, 
is first being developed. And Ishmael, too, is 
a wild man, whose hand is against every man ; 
which description applies equally to this rea- 
son, which brings to the mind a sense of inde- 
pendence and self-reliance, and a disposition 
to combat, to deny, to argue about whatever is 
presented as an object of belief. We have 



THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 29 

seen, too, in tracing the story of Hagar and 
Ishmael, how at a fountain of water in the 
wilderness the angel of the Lord appears to 
Hagar and warns her to return to her mis- 
tress, and submit herself under her hands. 
And in this event we have seen typified the 
mind of man which has relied on its own rea- 
son and has sought to look to natural science 
alone for all truth, now warned by the Spirit 
of God to return to its rejected faith, and to 
seek in the doctrines of revealed religion 
those truths which alone can have authority in 
the soul and can bring it any enduring re- 
freshment and comfort. 

But let us pursue this wonderful narrative 
with a view to further instruction, contained in 
its spiritual meaning, concerning the place and 
office of the reason in relation to faith. 

Ishmael is born, and Hagar returns with 
this her son to the house of Sarai her mistress. 
But after a time Sarai also bears to Abram a 
son, whose name is called Isaac. And we 



130 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 

read that Sarah saw the son of Hagar the 
Egyptian, which she had borne unto Abraham, 
mocking; and she said unto Abraham, " Cast 
out this bondwoman and her son: for the son 
of this bondwoman shall not be heir with 
my son, even with Isaac. And the thing was 
very grievous in Abraham's sight because of 
his son. And God said unto Abraham, Let it 
not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, 
and because of thy bondwoman ; in all that 
Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her 
voice ; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. 
And also of the son of the bondwoman 
will I make a nation, because he is thy seed. 
And Abraham rose up early in the morning, 
and took bread, and a bottle of water, and 
gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, 
and the child, and sent her away : and she 
departed, and wandered in the wilderness of 
Beer-sheba. And the water was spent in the 
bottle, and she cast the child under one of the 
shrubs. And she went, and sat her down over 



THE SPIRITUAL REASON, 131 

against him a good way off, as it were a bow- 
shot : for she said, Let me not see the death 
of the child. And she sat over against him, 
and lift up her voice, and wept. And God 
heard the voice of the lad ; and the angel of 
God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said 
unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; 
for God hath heard the voice of the lad where 
he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in 
thine hand; for I will make him a great nation. 
And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well 
of water ; and she went, and filled the bottle 
with water, and gave the lad drink. And God 
was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in 
the wilderness, and became an archer." 

Out of this beautiful narrative, as from a 
casket of rare jewels, we would venture to 
pluck but one gem from its infinite store of 
heavenly truths. And this is the truth herein 
contained concerning the regeneration of man 
as to his rational mind, or in other words, 
his advance from natural to spiritual reason ; 



132 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 

which is none other, when rightly understood, 
than the progress from the natural bondage 
under the law, which the apostle discerned, or 
the mere external recognition of the Divine 
commandments as to be obeyed through vio- 
lent self-compulsion, to that higher willing ser- 
vice of the free spirit "whose delight is in the 
law of the Lord." 

For man has one kind of reason before he 
is regenerate, and another kind after he is 
regenerate. The first may be called the 
natural reason, and the second the spiritual. 
For before a man has arrived at adult age and 
by a knowledge of his evils as sins, and by re- 
sisting temptation, he has begun to be actually 
a religious man, he has a reason, it is true, 
but a reason which regards nature as first and 
uppermost, and spiritual things only as in the 
second place. This natural reason admits the 
truths of the Bible, and the authority of the 
Divine law, and the religious doctrine, which 
have been taught by one's parents ; but it 



THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 33 

receives them at the bidding of another, and 
on outward evidence, and not yet from that 
interior conviction which comes from having 
tested in real life and proved what these 
things really mean and are. This natural 
reason abides, therefore, in apparent rather 
than in real truths; it sees things in the decep- 
tive, often false, lights of nature and the bodily 
senses. But so far as it does not deny these 
truths of doctrine, even its gross natural con- 
ception of them is useful, as affording a basis 
for that higher and truer knowledge which 
will come by the spiritual trials to be endured 
as one advances in years. 

The first thing to be observed in this nar- 
rative is the fact of Ishmael's mocking at the 
birth of Isaac. For Isaac represents the higher 
reason, which is distinct from that born of 
man's external sensuous knowledge.* And 

* In the Lord Himself, that Divine rational which from 
the indwelling Father replaced the merely human rational 

T2 



134 1SHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 

there is at first a discordance and want of 
sympathy between this reason of faith, as we 
may call it, and the reason of the senses. Ish- 
mael representing still the unregenerate natural 
reason, is true to his defiant, skeptical, neg- 
ative character. He mocks at Isaac, even as 
Hagar his mother once despised her mistress 
Sarai. The same antagonism is here repre- 
sented, between that sort of knowledge and the 
reasoning based thereon which comes in from 
our contact with, and study of, the natural 
world about us, and that other sort of knowl- 
edge and its reasoning which comes directly 
from heaven by revelation through the Divine 
Word and the doctrines of the Church thence 
derived; or which springs from a certain intui- 
tive perception of the truth which accompanies 
a life of actual goodness. This mockery of 
Isaac by Ishmael is like the senses of the body 

derived through the body born of Mary, is what is sig- 
nified by Isaac. 






THE SPIRITUAL REASON. ■ 1 35 

mocking the mind because it believes in a 
world which it cannot see, and because it says 
that the body does not live of itself but only 
from the invisible spirit within. Or it is like 
our selfish and carnal appetites, which seek to 
get and to enjoy the utmost present gratifica- 
tion, and our ambition to acquire riches and 
distinction by whatever means will not out- 
wardly disgrace us, mocking at those silent 
warnings of the conscience which speak of 
those evils which are sins, which tell us of God, 
of our higher obligations to Him, of our spir- 
itual peril, and the awful future that awaits the 
willful transgression of the Divine command- 
ments. Such is the mockery with which Ish- 
mael, or the natural reason, saluted Isaac, 
which is the reason of faith. 

Probably there are few persons who have 
made any experience in the religious life who 
have not at times felt very distinctly this antag- 
onism between the reason of the spirit and 
that of the senses; or, as we would rather say, 



136 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 

the reason of the regenerated and that of the 
unregenerated mind. Often in our own con- 
sciousness we are aware of the two opposite 
modes of thought existing almost simulta- 
neously. We see in a certain clear light, as 
from the spiritual world, the great truths of 
our faith ; we have a clear conception of God ; 
we hold the Bible to be his Divinely-inspired 
Word ; we believe in the existence, close 
around us, of the spiritual world, and in the 
guardianship of angels, and the temptations of 
evil spirits ; we believe in the judgment we 
must undergo after death, and in the eternal 
life of heaven which awaits us if we have faith- 
fully borne our cross in this life to the putting 
away of our evils as sins against God. But 
at the same time a voice out of this material 
realm of nature seems to cry out in mockery, 
" What do you know of all this ? Have you 
ever seen or touched or tasted any of these 
spiritual things ? How do you know that of 
which the senses give you no knowledge? 



THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 37 

What is the Bible but a history like any other? 
and what are religion and the doctrines of faith 
but certain inventions of the human mind, which 
are transmitted from one generation to another, 
and which, like civil laws and institutions, are 
preserved for the sake of the good order they 
promote, and their rules observed because cus- 
tom or respectability requires it?" If we had to 
resort to external evidence — to the evidence 
of our senses — to prove that there is a God, a 
Divine law of life, a revealed Word of God, 
and a future life in a spiritual world inhab- 
ited by spiritual beings, we surely would find 
it difficult to bring satisfactory proof to .the 
merely natural reason. Consequently, what- 
ever we know of these spiritual things we know 
by a higher kind of sense, and by the convic- 
tions of a higher kind of reason. We know 
the things of faith not by ocular demonstration, 
not by handling and seeing, but by a direct 
light poured in from heaven upon the soul, 
enabling us to believe the things which we have 

12* 



138 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 

learned, and in light to see light. Those re- 
ceive this light who are already in the endeavor 
to bring forth that which they know of the 
truth in a holy and useful life. With these the 
reason itself becomes enlightened from heaven, 
and thus earthly and spiritual knowledge be- 
come conjoined and harmonized in the mind, 
and religion is no longer mocked by science, 
but reverently and lovingly served by her, and 
made in many ways more delightful and more 
beautiful and more powerful by this gladly- 
rendered service of her earthly handmaid. 

But to return to the narrative once more. 
Ishmael and Hagar are sent forth again into 
the wilderness, and then, w T hen on the point of 
perishing, the water in the bottle being spent, 
and Hagar having removed herself from her 
child in order that she may not see him die, 
again the angel of the Lord comforts her ; he 
directs her to a well of water, and she, filling 
the bottle, gives the lad to drink. 

And Ishmael grows up in the wilderness, and 



THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 39 

God is with him ; and he becomes an archer. 
Now, we cannot fail to remark that the Divine 
Providence seems to be specially extended over 
Hagar and Ishmael. For this is the second 
time that in their desolation they have been 
comforted by the angel of the Lord. This 
evidently typifies that protection and preser- 
vation which the Lord provides for even the 
natural reason of man, and for this, too, when 
it is in enmity to spiritual truth, and in discord- 
ance with the faith entertained in the soul. 
The purpose of the mercy of God is not to 
destroy our reason as a bad and mischievous 
agent in the mind, but to elevate it into spiritual 
light, so that with a clear and justly-discerning 
eye it may look up and behold the things that 
are in heaven, or the world of spiritual knowl- 
edge, as well as to look down and see the 
things of the earth and material science. 

But for the reason thus to be reconciled with 
faith, or, which is the same thing, for it to be 
receptive of any spiritual light, man must will- 



T40 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 

ingly and deliberately renounce his self-depend- 
ence and look up to the Lord, who alone gives 
spiritual truth to the mind and gives faith to 
the soul. And yet so proud, so self-reliant, so 
confident of its own sufficiency is the natural 
reason of man, that it is only through periods 
of bitter trial and desolation, through seasons 
of doubt and the apparent destitution of all 
truth, that man is brought to a sense of his own 
helplessness and blindness, and of his need of 
a Divine light and guidance. Many, indeed, 
there are whose souls are too weak to with- 
stand the desolation of these dark and hungry 
wanderings in the wilderness. The Lord pro- 
tects all souls from temptations greater than 
they can bear. Those who know nothing of 
these trials of soul remain still on that level of 
mere natural reason, accepting appearances for 
truth, and abiding by the statements and the 
authority of others. But to prove the reality 
of the spiritual reason, and know what is the 
confidence of a spiritual faith, these are fruits 



THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 141 

which can be earned only by the bitter lessons 
of temptation and desolation. 

These minds must be strong enough to 
withstand long days and seasons of famishing 
for truth, to feel the little spiritual strength, 
with which they prided themselves, as belong- 
ing to their own selfhood, vanishing away like 
the water and the bread which failed Hagar 
and her child in the wilderness. And as Hagar 
hid her child Ishmael under a shrub, and sitting 
down a good way off, lest she should see him 
dying, lifted up her voice and wept, so must 
these souls have strength to see passing away 
all that was most dearly prized, all earthly com- 
forts and delights, it may be, but more surely 
all those spiritual riches and merits in which 
they had prided themselves ; and chiefly must 
they witness the utter abnegation and rejection 
of all that merely natural reason which would 
oppose itself to spiritual truth and would defy 
its authority. 

When the mind is thus cleansed of its delu- 



142 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 

sions and stripped of its pride, and, feeling its 
destitution, actually thirsts for the refreshing 
waters of Divine truth, then the Holy Spirit 
descends into the soul, bringing with itself its 
own peace, light, and comfort. Guided by this 
inward monitor, the humbled and chastened 
soul turns to the spiritual truths revealed from 
God out of heaven in his Holy Word, and finds 
therein that wherewith to revive and strengthen 
and refresh the whole man. So " God opened 
the eyes of Hagar, and she saw a well of water; 
and she went, and filled the bottle with water, 
and gave the lad drink/' Led thus from re- 
liance on our own human prudence to put our 
main trust in the providence of God, and from 
the uncertain guidance of our self-will and its 
cunning persuasions to the sure and constant 
lamp of the Divine Word, our whole mind is set 
right, and we are prepared with firm foot and 
courageous heart to enter upon the conflicts 
and the toils of our heavenward pilgrimage. 
And Ishmael, who grows strong in the pres- 



THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 43 

ence of God, shall become our archer. That 
enlightened spiritual reason which God now 
gives to the soul, armed with the truths of our 
holy faith and mighty in their Divine strength, 
shall be our defender against all assaults of 
falsity and unbelief. Of him it shall be said as 
of the Divine Prototype, " Thine arrows are 
sharp in the heart of the king's enemies; where- 
by the people fall under thee." 



"VIII. 
&\\t f&tttuxl Stamp ; w f gjtow JmtU i$ U kt gxmxvtA, 



And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they 
bring thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause 
the lamp to burn always. In the tabernacle of the con- 
gregation without the vail, which is before the testimony, 
Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening to morn- 
ing before the lord. — Ex. xxvii. 20. 



THIS is the ordinance of the eternal lamp. 
In the Tabernacle of the true Israel the 
Lord commands that a lamp, fed with pure oil, 
be kept forever burning before the vail of the 
Testimony. From evening to morning it shall 
ever be fed and trimmed, and kept burning 
before the Lord. 

The pattern of the Tabernacle was seen in 
heaven. The Tabernacle is itself an image or 
a picture of heaven, built upon earth, erected 
144 



THE ETERNAL LAMP. 145 

by men's hands, and dwelt in by men ; it repre- 
sents also the life of heaven brought down to 
the life of this world. It is the true picture of 
the Lord's Church upon earth ; for the true 
Church on earth is a reflection of heaven, of 
its order, and beauty, and glory, in the life of 
men upon earth. 

All those affections, thoughts, and states of 
our life which make up in us the life of the 
Church, or of heaven, are completely and un- 
erringly portrayed by the Divine hand in the 
descriptions of the Tabernacle furnished us in 
the Bible. This carefully detailed account of 
the Tabernacle is preserved to us after so many 
centuries to this end, that it may ever speak to 
us of the heavenly life, and guide us continually 
toward that eternal House of God, not made 
with hands, but prepared for our abode by our 
Father in heaven. This Tabernacle of which 
we read so much in the book of Exodus is, 
like all the rest, a symbol of those unseen 
and interior things of our actual life concern- 
ed J 3 



146 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 

ing which the Divine Word is intended to in- 
struct us. It is not the mere structure itself 
that is of spiritual interest to us, but rather 
the meaning of it all ; and this is not difficult for 
those to arrive at who look for a Divine mean- 
ing and cause in not only the outward and 
visible things of God's creation, but equally in 
his written Word. Words are useful to us 
only as we get at their meaning, — that is, 
when we get at the mind that is in them. So 
a picture is not of value to us as so much 
crude matter, but as representing something 
which the mind sees and enjoys.- The Taber- 
nacle of the Jews, were it now to be rebuilt, 
would neither be a heaven or a church ; and, 
therefore, as we build it in our imagination 
while reading about it, we should remember 
that the real heaven and the real church here 
described is something which belongs to the 
mind, and to the states and conditions of our 
spiritual life. 

The Tabernacle is the Church of the Lord 






HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 47 

upon earth. In the inmost part of the Taber- 
nacle was the Sanctuary, or the Holy of Holies. 
Here was the Word of God, called the Testi- 
mony and the Covenant. It was kept in a 
sacred depository called the Ark of the Cov- 
enant ; and over it were the golden Cherubim, 
which represented the protecting mercy and 
providence of God. Before this Holy of 
Holies hung a vail, and without the vail 
were the place and the utensils of worship. 
There stood the altar of incense, the table of 
shewbread, and the golden lamp or candle- 
stick. This was called the holy place. It was 
in this holy place, outside of the vail of the 
Testimony, that the perpetual lamp was or- 
dained. 

Now, when we think of the Church, not as 
a building of wood or stone, but as a state of 
truth and of life, — for the real Church consists 
in this, — we shall not have much difficulty in 
reading the spiritual meaning of this account 
of the Tabernacle. The Holy of Holies is 



148 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 

where the Lord dwells most interiorly, secretly, 
and permanently with man. It is the highest, 
purest region of the soul ; it is in the good 
and holy affections which the Lord inspires 
into man from Himself. It corresponds in the 
mind of man with the highest of the three 
heavens, or that heaven which is nearest the 
Lord. It is named the celestial heaven. The 
angels who dwell there are called the celestial 
angels, and love, which is the highest and most 
divine of all activities, is what most distin- 
guishes their nature and life. The Lord dwells 
in the Holy of Holies when he dwells in the 
love or the pure affections of a man's soul. 
He dwells there not in a circumscribed per- 
sonal sense, but even as He dwells in the Tent 
of Israel, namely, in the Ark of the Cov- 
enant and the Mercy-seat. For it is in the 
Covenant, Testimony, or written Word of 
God, that the Lord is approached, known, 
seen, and worshiped by man ; and when this 
revealed Word, which is the Divine Truth 



HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 49 

itself, is hidden in the heart, is treasured in the 
soul's best affection, then is the mind verily a 
church or a tabernacle with its Holy of Holies, 
its place of the Lord's chosen abode. Then, 
too, may the Lord be approached and wor- 
shiped in his Mercy-Seat, or the Ark of the 
Covenant. For the man who believes and 
loves the Word of God, cannot but feel and 
know that there is constantly hovering over 
him an all-wise, all-loving Divine Providence, 
and in this perpetual providence of God he 
will feel that the Lord is ever dwelling near 
him, yea, in him, in the Mercy-seat. 

But our best and purest affections are known 
to us only through our thoughts, and are proved 
and tested by our thoughts and our works. 
Although the Lord dwells most nearly and 
interiorly with man, in the abode of the affec- 
tions, still is this to us all a secret abode. It 
is the secret place of the Most High : a place, 
like the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle, into 
which none but the high-priest shall be per- 

13* 



ISO THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 

mitted to enter. And while we believe that 
the Lord is interiorly present with all men, and 
that He is especially conjoined with those who 
know, love, and do the Word of His Cove- 
nant, yet is it not for us, with our finite and 
human vision, to penetrate into the secret 
modes of the Divine indwelling and operation 
in the soul. There, within the vail, is the Ark 
and the Mercy-seat. Within and beyond the 
reach of our thought and knowledge is the 
perpetual presence of the Lord within the 
hearts of men, and the constant inflowing of 
Life from Him. But without the vail we come 
down to the plane of our conscious, think- 
ing, reflecting, voluntary and seemingly inde- 
pendent life. Here is the place where we in 
free deliberate choice bring our offerings and 
bow down and worship before the Lord, who 
is above all things in heaven and earth. Here 
is where our affections must put on the shape 
of thought and reason, and here is where the 
perpetual lamp is to burn, — and that lamp is 



HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 151 

the lamp of Faith. Here is the place where 
our mortal steps may tread ; the plane of our 
free, spiritual agency, of our independent and 
responsible human life as distinguished from 
the Divine Life within, in which all alike live, 
move, and have being. That should, indeed, 
be a holy place. It should be furnished by 
every believer in God with its altar of in- 
cense, its table of shewbread, and its ever- 
burning lamp. From this, the plane of our 
daily life before God, should go up daily the 
incense of our prayer and worship. It should 
present its offering of the good affections of 
charity, its daily deeds of mutual love and 
usefulness, and be ever illumined with the 
light of a right and lively faith, — as with a 
lamp of pure beaten oil to burn forever before 
the Lord. 

To derive more practical instruction from 
this beautiful symbol of the Divine Word, let 
us look more carefully to the purpose of this 
lamp, and the way it is to be provided and 



152 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 

maintained. All these furnishings of the " holy 
place," the place before the vail, are indicative 
of worship offered up to the Lord. They are 
representatives of the acts of man's life, as 
these are accompanied by a recognition of the 
Lord and by obedience to Him ; for worship 
consists in the regard a man has for the Lord 
in whatever he wishes, thinks, or does. Wor- 
ship is not in the acts of life, but in the feeling 
and acknowledgment and purpose in which 
the acts are done. Now, this place called the 
holy place represents the spiritual mind ; that 
is, a mind which is lighted up with the Divine 
Truth, which acts from faith in the truth, and 
which, consequently, is in a state of constant 
worship toward God. 

The Lamp is the constant Faith of such a 
mind. It is only while such Faith in the Lord 
lasts that there can be any worship of Him ; 
that there can be any good offerings brought 
before Him out of the fruits of life. The 
Lamp must burn constantly, day and night. 



HO W FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 53 

The Lamp ceasing to burn would be the ex- 
tinction of Faith in the soul : it would be a 
man's ceasing to believe any more in God and 
in his revealed Word. The consequence of 
this would be not only mental darkness and 
universal uncertainty, doubt, and, at the ap- 
proach of death, or of any earthly misfortune, 
despair and dread, but it would be also the end 
of all real goodness in a man's life. For his 
whole devotion, aspiration, and desire would 
now be thrown back upon himself, and self 
would become the idol now set up for worship, 
and the oracle to which he must resort for all 
natural and spiritual wisdom ; since if there 
be no absolute and revealed Divine Will and 
Wisdom, then is human will and its wisdom 
the highest to which we can look, and which, 
as a guide, we can follow. And let those who 
seek and follow this as the only true and safe 
guide, learn from short experience the extent 
of its ability to promote, unaided by Divine 
Truth, the good or the happiness of mankind. 



154 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 

The man who lives not for God lives for himself; 
and he lives not for God who does not believe in 
God and seek to know God's will. But to live 
for God is to live believing in God, and ordering 
our life, in every condition, calling, and act, by 
the light of revealed Truth. To live for God 
is to have forever burning before the Holy of 
Holies in our souls the Lamp of Faith fed with 
the pure beaten oil of charity and good works. 

And we have now to consider further these 
three points : Who are to feed this Lamp ? 
With what shall it be fed ? And who are to 
order it or keep it forever burning ? 

The people of Israel are commanded to 
bring the oil for the Lamp. This oil is to be 
pure and of beaten olive. And Aaron and his 
sons, the priests, are to order and maintain it. 

Aaron, the high-priest, and his sons repre- 
sent primarily the Lord as the giver of all faith 
and love. But they also represent in a sec- 
ondary and finite sense the 'ministry of the 
Lord's Church on earth as that instrumentality 



HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. I 55 

by which Divine truth, and thereby Divine 
good, is administered to men. It is the office 
of the ministers of the Church to instruct the 
people in the things of Faith, and thereby to 
lead them to good of life. They do not minis- 
ter of their own, but of the Lord's truth, and 
so far as they do this they, like Aaron of old, 
represent the Lord, who is alone the Truth 
itself. In all the duties of their office the min- 
isters by teaching the truth and leading men 
to believe, love, and do it, do verily order and 
keep burning the perpetual Lamp of Faith in 
the holy place. The preaching of the gospel, 
the baptizing into the Divine name of Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit, the teaching to observe 
all things commanded to the first Apostles 
by our Lord upon earth, these duties are all 
ordained for the one great purpose of im- 
planting and cultivating in the minds of men 
a true and living Faith in the Lord. The office 
of Aaron is perpetuated in the true and ever- 
lasting Church of Jesus Christ. The Lamp is 



156 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 

ordained for all generations, and it is now as 
ever the duty of the ministry of the Church to 
see that it be kept burning with a clear and 
certain light from evening to morning, — that 
is, through all the various states of life in the 
minds of men. 

But more than this, more than to keep the 
Lamp lighted and in order, to keep the truth 
which is given from above ever shining before 
the minds of men, the priests cannot. It is 
not the priests who are to bring the oil where- 
with to feed this Lamp ; and if the oil shall fail 
the Lamp will go out. It is the children of 
Israel who are to bring the oil. Faith, which 
is the perpetual Lamp, cannot live without 
charity, or the works of obedience and love, 
any more than can a lamp burn without oil. 
Oil is the good of charity in the daily life, and 
it is only by living the truth, by bringing it 
into the acts and relations of the every-day life, 
that members of the Church really have Faith. 
For Faith is not alive, it is not Faith, so long 






BOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 57 

as it consists in a mere knowledge of what is 
true, and a mere thinking of true precepts ; but 
Faith is the truth in us when it is obeyed and 
actually performed in the life we lead from day 
to day. It is plain that the priests can no more 
supply this actual goodness or charity of life 
wherewith to keep Faith alive in the Church 
than they can live and act as substitutes for the 
people. The priest can present the truth to a 
man's mind, but the man himself, with the Di- 
vine aid, does the rest. The priest may teach 
the truth given to him ; the man must bring it 
into actual life, must learn it, love it, obey it. 
Obedience to the truth in the acts of a good life, 
this is what both priest and people, as alike 
members of one Church, must furnish if Faith 
is to be preserved in the world, and if the Di- 
vine ordinance of the perpetual Lamp is to be 
obeyed by the generation of this day. Are 
there not too many, alas ! who forget this ordi- 
nance requiring the children of Israel them- 
selves to bring the oil for the Lamp, and who 

14 



158 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 

think that the ministers are appointed not only 
to keep the Lamp burning, but to furnish the 
oil as well ; not only to teach the truth of the 
Church, but as substitutes for the people to 
practice it, and so to keep Faith alive not 
only for themselves but for others ? It is a 
fatal error to suppose that any man's Faith 
is to be preserved by his minister ; no priest 
ever did or ever shall give to a man belief in 
God or in religion. He can tell a man the 
truth out of God's Word, but belief in this 
truth must be acquired by the man himself 
through a constant prayerful endeavor to 
obey it in actual life. And this obedience to 
the truth, this bringing it into contact with all 
the motives, affections, and purposes of our 
life in the world ; this scrutinizing and dis- 
criminating between good and evil; yea, this 
crushing and grinding of our heart's purposes, 
of our life's motives, under the hard rule of 
absolute truth and duty, — this is what yields 
that material with which we can alone keep 






HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 59 

Faith alive ; this is the pure oil of the olive 
beaten for the light which we, as children of 
the Lord's Israel, are to bring constantly to 
feed the eternal Lamp ; with this, the rich fruit 
of our daily experience in endeavoring each 
one for himself to practice the holy doctrine 
which the Church teaches, with this, we are to 
keep forever burning and shining before the 
Lord a true, reasonable, and living Faith. The 
light of such a Lamp will make bright and 
beautiful the holy place before the vail of the 
Testimony. Fed with such oil, it shall never go 
out: evening and morning, in the hour of de- 
pression as in the hour of gladness and confi- 
dence, it shall burn bright before the Lord. 
In its light we shall come to the Holy of Ho- 
lies with our worship, our prayers and thanks- 
giving, to our Father in heaven. Its shining 
shall ever point out to us, in the midst of the 
confusion, the doubts, the troubles and fears of 
this life, where is the Ark of God's Covenant 
and the Mercy-seat. 



IX. 
®he §*\Ux of $nmx$t ; m, the Janttty irf Ww^iping 



^^/ //w& jvW/ make an altar to burn incense upon : of 
shittim wood shalt thou make it. And Aaron shall burn 
thereon sweet incense every morning : when he dresseth 
the lamps, he shall burn incense upo?i it. And when Aaron 
lighteth the la?7ips at even, he shall burn incense upon it, 
a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your gen- 
erations. — Ex. xxx. i, 7, 8. 



AN altar of perpetual incense before the 
Lord is here ordained for all generations 
by the Divine Law. It forms a part of that 
perfect order and form of the Church which 
reflects its own image in the order and form 
of heaven. As a literal, external ordinance, 
the Altar of Incense is no longer obligatory, 
because the Lord has now made known its 

nature as a spiritual and internal ordinance. 
160 



THE ALTAR OF INCENSE. l6l 

As such, it is forever to be observed. Like 
every jot and tittle of the Divine Law de- 
livered to Moses and recorded in the Old 
Testament, this ordinance of the Altar of In- 
cense is still in force, in its true and spiritual, 
but no longer in its mere representative sense. 

The Altar of Incense is a part of the fur- 
nishing of the Tabernacle, or Tent of the 
Children of Israel. The Tabernacle is the 
Church of the Lord ; the Altar of Incense is a 
part of the actual life of every man in whom 
the Church is. 

There is a spiritual meaning in the order in 
which the various parts of the Tabernacle are 
in the Divine Word ordained and described. 

First in order is mentioned the Testimony, 
or the Law; this represents the Lord Himself. 
Then the Ark, or the inmost heaven, where the 
Lord dwells ; then the table on which were the 
breads, by which are signified all good things 
of love which come from heaven ; then the 
candlestick with the lamps, which represent 

14* 



1 62 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 

all the good things of faith ; then is described 
the Tent itself, or the Tabernacle, which is the 
Church as constructed out of this love and 
faith in the mind ; thereupon is described the 
altar of burnt-offerings, which represents the 
regeneration of man as effected in the Church ; 
and last of all is mentioned the Altar of In- 
cense ; and this represents that which crowns 
and completes the life and character of man 
as a spiritual being, namely, the worship of 
the Lord. 

The worship of the Lord is what is spiritu- 
ally meant by the Altar of Incense. The lift- 
ing or sending up to the Lord the faith and 
the love which we have derived from Him, — 
this is the spiritual ordinance of the perpetual 
incense to be burned before the Lord in all 
generations. Worship is all that proceeds 
from love and faith with man, and is elevated 
to the Lord. Man does not elevate anything 
from himself to the Lord, but the Lord Him- 
self elevates these things of faith and love to 



THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 63 

Himself; and so lifts man up nearer to Him- 
self, and more into the life of heaven. Wor- 
ship itself is a faculty given us by the Lord : 
we can only worship the Lord from the Lord 
Himself dwelling in us. But this faculty of 
worship, — a faculty given to man during his 
efforts to be regenerated, — is one to which 
we should all give the most careful heed. It 
is because this faculty of worshiping God forms 
so essential a part of heavenly and eternal 
life that God commanded Aaron to make an 
Altar of Incense, and to burn incense thereon 
perpetually. There were, as we have seen, 
other things ordained in the Tabernacle, things 
which teach us the need of faith in the Lord, 
of the affections of goodness which He alone 
can give us to be the food of our souls, of the 
constant purifying of our hearts by the fires 
of temptation, and by the laver of the Divine 
Truth. But all these are insufficient to make 
our inner man an image of heaven and fit for 
eternal life in heaven if there be not erected 



1 64 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 

before the Holy of Holies in our hearts an 
Altar of Incense, whereon morning and even- 
ing a sweet odor of true and sincere worship 
shall be offered up to the Lord. 

The faculty of worshiping God, so far as it 
belongs to man's voluntary and seemingly in- 
dependent life, consists briefly in this : in think- 
ing of God, acknowledging and adoring Him. 
All thought of God, and all love and acknowl- 
edgment and veneration of Him, come from 
the faith and the love which God gives us from 
Himself. But our own thoughts of God, ac- 
companied by the acknowledgment of Him, 
by reverence and obedience to Him, and hu- 
miliation before Him, — these thoughts seem to 
us to be voluntary on our part ; and these are 
what make up, we may rightly say, the faculty 
of worshiping God. 

All true worship, like all true faith, must be 
grounded in love to the Lord. By this we 
mean, in a constant desire and effort to do the 
Lord's commandments, — for our Lord says, 



THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 65 

" He that hath my commandments, and keepeth 
them, he it is that loveth me." (St. John xiv. 2 1 .) 
And this doing the commandments of the 
Lord is what constitutes the life of charity, — 
of doing what is right and good. But we can 
see how a man, having learned the Divine 
commandments, might, without acknowledging 
them to be Divine, obey them from selfish and 
worldly motives, in an outward manner, and 
be really worshiping the idol of self, and not 
loving God at all. 

Therefore all good works, in order to be 
truly good, must be accompanied by faith in 
God, — that is, they must be done because God 
has required them, and the goodness that is in 
them must be seen to be the goodness of God 
and not of man. 

Now, if love be the willingness to do what 
is right, and faith the teacher and guide in 
doing it, worship is that faculty whereby all 
the good works of faith and love are referred 
to the Lord as their only source, and whereby 



1 66 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 

alone we can do good unselfishly, and from that 
love of goodness itself, which is love in the 
Lord. While faith and charity are, therefore, 
both, the necessary elements of all real wor- 
ship, — since without faith we would have no 
God to worship, and without love toward God 
we would be wholly lovers and worshipers of 
self, — yet, love and faith are incomplete with- 
out the worship of the Lord. In other words, 
love or charity is not charity, nor is faith faith, 
without the spirit of worship. For charity 
without worship becomes mere self-righteous- 
ness, or external morality ; and faith without 
worship becomes mere intellectual culture and 
ability to do things that are right and seem- 
ingly holy from having learned them. But 
the principle, or spirit of worship, is what 
blends charity and faith into a holy, heavenly, 
and truly blessed union. This inspires the 
good deeds that are done and the holy truths 
that are remembered with continual recog- 
nition of the Lord, and, therefore, makes these 



THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 67 

continually receptive of new life from Him. 
It is only when the good affections and true 
thoughts of man are conjoined with their 
source, the Lord, that they remain good and 
true. Dissevered once from Him, they be- 
come turned into their opposites, — thus, into 
what is selfish, evil, and false. Worship is that 
connecting link that binds our souls to the 
Lord ; that keeps the golden chain of our 
thoughts, motives, affections, and desires al- 
ways suspended high up in the bright abyss 
of heaven, enabling us to feel ever fresh im- 
pulses to do good, and to see ever brighter 
and surer gleams of the light of truth. 

We see, then, that while the essence and 
life of worship consists in love toward God 
and faith in Him, yet that it is a faculty distinct 
from both loving and believing, and as a dis- 
tinct faculty it must have its distinct exercise 
in outward act. For worship, like love and 
faith, must have not only its substance but its 
form. There can be no love without some 



1 68 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 

exercise in good and loving deeds ; there can be 
no faith without the learning and knowing of 
some positive doctrines of truth ; so neither can 
there be any worship, any lifting up of the things 
of our heart and life toward God, without some 
distinct, formal, conscious act of worship. The 
faculty of worshiping God can only be pre- 
served and cultivated by actual exercise ; and 
this exercise is performed whenever a man, 
by a voluntary act of his mind, — accompanied, 
it may be or may not be, by words of the 
mouth and gesture of the body, — places himself 
in God's presence and personally addresses 
Him in the emotions of thankfulness, of ado- 
ration, of confession, of supplication, or of 
praise. In a word, worship is the intercourse 
which a man seeks between himself as a person 
and his Maker. It is the expression in per- 
sonal language and act of those general prin- 
ciples of charity and faith which should con- 
stantly find expression in the daily life. Thus, 
in doing the duty of one's calling, in laboring to 



THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 69 

overcome temptations to sin, in remembering 
the Word of God to do it, in all this there is as 
a general principle both of love to God and of 
faith, and in this there is the material, so to 
speak, the unspoken soul of worship. But, 
like thoughts which burn to be uttered on the 
lips, like purposes which impel the body to 
deeds, so this inward life of love and faith 
seeks and demands its utterance in words. It 
seeks its human, personal form, wherein it can 
address its Divine Author in the language 
of love, of praise, of confession, and prayer. 
That such worship may be enjoyed by man, 
and that this important need of our human 
nature might be met, God has mercifully re- 
vealed Himself to us men, in Human Form, 
and has enabled us to approach and worship 
Him, in a Divine Humanity, as a known God, 
as very God and Man ; and He says to all his 
children, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
" Cast your burden on the Lord, He will sustain 

H 15 



170 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 

you." " Pray and faint not." "Ask and ye shall 
receive." " After this manner pray ye : ' Our 
Father, who art in the heavens, hallowed be thy 
name/ " and so on through the Divine prayer. 
Without the acts of external worship as out- 
ward formal expressions of our personal rela- 
tions to God as a Divine Man, and as verily 
that Father in heaven on whom w r e actually 
depend for our daily bread as well as for all 
our spiritual life, we are in danger of losing, 
practically, all idea and sentiment of God as 
a Being to be worshiped ; of ignoring all per- 
sonal relations to Him, and of thus resolving 
Him, in our habits of thought, into a kind of 
abstract principle in nature, somewhat like the 
Deity of the pantheists or deists. Worship is 
the personal address of the soul to its known, 
revealed God, Saviour, Protector, Preserver, 
and Father in heaven. In the Arcana Ccelestia, 
Num. 10,177, we find this terse and striking 
definition of worship : 

" When mention is made of worship, thereby 



THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 171 

is meant that holy principle which is wrought 
by prayers, adorations, confessions, and the 
like, w T hich proceed from the internal principles 
that are of love and charity." These things 
constitute the worship which is meant by 
burning of incense, as is manifest by the fol- 
lowing passages. In the Psalms, we read, 
" My prayers are accepted : they are as in- 
cense before Thee." In the Apocalypse, v. 8, 
"The four animals and the four and tw r enty 
elders fell down before the Lamb, having each 
of them harps, and golden vials full of incense, 
which are the prayers of the saints." Again, 
"An angel having a golden censer : and there 
was given to him much incense, that he should 
offer it with the prayers of all the saints on the 
golden altar which is before the throne. The 
smoke of the incense ascended with the 
prayers of the saints." And in Malachi, " From 
the rising of the sun unto the going down 
thereof incense shall be offered unto my 
name, and a pure offering." i. 11. 



172 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 

Here let us carefully observe this defini- 
tion of worship, which may be regarded as 
authoritative doctrine. First: "It is a holy 
principle" of our life and conduct ; thus a 
faculty and an experience distinct from all 
others. Second: It is not natural or innate, 
but rather comes by practice; for "it is 
wrought by prayers, adorations, and confes- 
sions, and other like acts." And Third : It is 
only wrought by these acts " when they pro- 
ceed from an interior principle of love and 
faith." 

Love to God, or the Divine good which 
flows into this love in our hearts, is the very 
precious shittim wood itself of which the Altar 
of Incense is built. The incense smoking on the 
altar, sending up its fumes of delicious odor, is 
the perfect symbol of the sincere worship of 
man before the Lord. Man lights the incense 
from the fire of his own desire to approach, to 
adore, and supplicate the Lord. The fumes 
rise of themselves ; man does not lift them up. 



THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 73 

So do the prayers of a sincere heart rise to 
God, because God draws them to Himself. 
For, as the great central Sun of all that is 
good and true, He attracts to Himself all 
the really holy and pure emotions of our 
hearts. 

And, finally, the perfume of the burning in- 
cense is grateful to our senses, even as the 
sincere prayers and thanksgivings of our 
hearts are truly grateful to the Lord. The 
incense of spices signifies, we are taught, the 
grateful hearing and reception by the Lord of 
that which is elevated to Him out of genuine 
faith and love in the life of man. How beau- 
tiful, then, and how striking is this primeval 
symbol of the burning incense ! The fumes 
rising from the altar are, indeed, like the 
thoughts and affections of a worshiping soul 
soaring above all mortal and earthly things 
into the pure, bright presence of God ; and 
their sweet, clean odor tells of that Divine 
perception of the real quality of the worship 

15* 



174 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 

offered up, and the Divine approval and joyful 
reception of all that is good and true therein. 
Says the Psalmist, in the language which 
may worthily form a part of the Christian's 
ritual : " Let my Prayer be set for me before 
Thee as Incense, and the lifting up of my 
hands as the evening sacrifice. ,, Our prayers 
and the uplifting of our hands are the eleva- 
tion of our souls to the Lord ; first, in the holy 
principles of life, and thence in the word and 
gestures of Divine worship. And not only in 
the evening, but both morning and evening 
was Aaron, the priest, ordered to burn incense 
on the Altar of Incense, before the Holy of 
Holies, the presence of God in the sanctuary. 
Well will it be for the Christian if, not only in 
a spiritual way, he offers up the worship of 
thought and affection to the Lord in all the 
varying states and experiences of life, but, 
especially, if he seek and strives earnestly, by 
the regular exercise of daily prayer, confession, 
and adoration before God, to cultivate that 



THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 75 

holy principle of worship which the Altar of 
Incense represents. For if we would realize 
that God is with us to protect and bless us, 
we must make real our personal relation, our 
approach and address to Him. If we forget 
that we are ever in the presence of Him, be- 
fore whom all things in heaven and earth must 
bow down, then shall we forget that He is a 
God who is near to us, who cares for us, who 
will hear us when we call unto Him. Rather, 
by collecting the thoughts and coming rever- 
ently before Him, to lift the heart directly to 
Him in prayer and worship, let the Christian 
make it his daily habit to place himself spirit- 
ually in the holy place of the Tabernacle, there 
to burn a perpetual incense before God ; yea, 
there, in the solemn but peaceful conscious- 
ness that "tHe -Lord is in his holy Temple," to 
let all the earth keep silence before Him. 



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xtv$u# Pau'tf (SMwir*. 



But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his counte- 
nance, or on the height of his stature ; because L have 
refused him : for the Lord seeth not as man seeth ; for 
man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord 
looketh o?t the heart. — I. Sam. xvi. 7. 



THUS was Samuel, the Lord's Prophet, in- 
structed in making his choice of a king, 
that should be anointed to rule over Israel as 
the successor of Saul, who had disobeyed the 
Divine Word. 

The Lord had sent Samuel to Jesse, the 
Bethlehemite, saying that He had provided a 
king from among his sons. And when Sam- 
uel had come to Jesse, he called him and his 
sons together to the sacrifice which he would 
176 



THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING. 1 77 

make unto the Lord. And Jesse came, and 
seven of his sons with him ; but one son, the 
youngest, was left behind to tend the sheep. 
And Samuel looked on these sons of Jesse, 
one after another, to see which it should be 
that the Lord had chosen to be anointed king. 
And when he looked on the first, Eliab, he 
thought that the Lord's anointed was surely 
before him. We suppose he judged this from 
the face and imposing stature of Eliab. For 
when he so determined, the Lord at once ad- 
dresses Samuel, saying, Regard not the face, 
nor the stature ; for him have I rejected : the 
Lord seeth not as man seeth ; for man looketh 
on the outward appearance, but the Lord 
looketh on the heart. 

And Samuel, being thus Divinely instructed, 
proceeded to view the other sons of Jesse as 
they passed before him one by one. But all 
seven passed by, and yet Samuel said, "The 
Lord hath not chosen these." And then, on 
inquiry, he learned that there remained yet 

H* 



178 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 

the youngest son, who was tending the sheep'. 
And Samuel said, " Send and fetch him : for 
we will not sit down till he come hither.'' 
And we read that Jesse " sent, and brought 
him in. Now he was ruddy, and withal of a 
beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. 
And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him: for 
this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil, 
and anointed him in the midst of his brethren : 
and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David 
from that day forward. " 

Thus was David chosen by the Lord and 
anointed king over Israel But it is not as a 
part of the civil history of the Jews that this 
event is of interest to the Christian, but as a 
part of the history of the inner life of us all. 
For, while the letter of the Holy Bible treats 
of outward and earthly things in the language 
of a parable, its spiritual or inner meaning 
everywhere relates to the religious experience 
of man and to the history of the soul. 

Now, the first general maxim or moral which 



THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 79 

we derive from this narrative is that which is 
so forcibly stated in its very words : " The 
Lord seeth not as man seeth ; for man looketh 
on the outward appearance : the Lord looketh 
on the heart." This is a truth everywhere ad- 
mitted and frequently urged in our relations 
one with another. We cannot too carefully 
bear it in mind when it comes to applying it 
to ourselves. We are all ready enough to 
urge it upon others for their adoption. Let 
us remember to apply it to our own conduct 
as rigidly when we are formimg our own judg- 
ments of those around us. "The Lord seeth 
not as man seeth ; man looketh on the outward 
appearance : the Lord looketh on the heart." 

It is true that we are not to blame for not 
being able to judge as God judges, for we can- 
not read the interior motives of another ; we 
cannot look directly on the heart of another. 
This power belongs to Him who is All-seeing, 
who alone can look through outward appear- 
ance to the inward reality. For this state 



180 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 

of things we are not to blame ; and all that 
God requires of us is, that we remember that 
what we see is only the appearance, and, re- 
membering this, that we obey his command, 
" judge not, that ye be not judged.'' And, 
moreover, if we remember this, that God 
alone, and not man, sees the heart, then we 
shall know where to look for the only justi- 
fication and approval of what we ourselves 
are and do. Whatever men think and say of 
us will be of less importance while we remem- 
ber that they judge only of the appearance ; 
but it will be all the more important, yea, the 
one all-important thing, that before Him " who 
looketh on the heart" we can present a con- 
science void of offense. How many miseries 
grow out of our forgetting and our misapply- 
ing this Divine rule of judgment! On the 
one hand we allow all kinds of ill will and 
hatred to grow up between ourselves and our 
neighbor, by judging that which we cannot see 
and know, — his motives, his heart. Since we 



THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. l8l 

cannot see his motive, we immediately con- 
struct one for him to suit ourselves ; we lend 
him a motive out of our own evil will, and in 
this way the judgment we form surely falls back 
upon ourselves. We see things done that are 
unjust, distasteful to us ; wrong, as it seems, 
beyond any question. We cannot regard 
such things as right, w r e cannot make them 
seem right to us by any ever so friendly re- 
gard for him who did them. And it is not re- 
quired of us that we should do so. Wrong 
which seems wrong to us must remain wrong, 
and be treated as wrong. But thus far we 
may go and no farther. We dare not, cannot, 
say that the same thing which seems wrong, 
and is wrong to us, is equally wrong to him 
who did it ; because the motive of the deed is 
what determines its quality of right or wrong, 
and this motive lies in the heart, which God 
only can see. The deed may truly be as 
wrong for the doer as it is in our eyes ; but 
of this real guilt of the deed there is one 

16 



1 82 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 

judge only, that is God, who alone sees the 
heart, and who alone can judge the motive of 
the deed. Another evil which we make to 
ourselves out of this false mode of judging is, 
that we allow ourselves to be influenced far 
too much by what we think will be the judg- 
ment of men, and far too little by what we 
feel to be the Divine judgment. There should 
be no higher satisfaction, no more perfect 
peace of mind, than the approval which our 
own conscience gives to a deed done in the 
fear of God. But how prone we are to think 
that this will be a poor reward, to have God's 
approval only, while all the world's opinion is 
against us ! And so we often choose to sacri- 
fice all the blessed quiet and peace of a heart 
pure in its intention, before the eyes of the 
Most Holy, for the temporary approval of 
those about us, who are so short-sighted as 
that we can make fools of them by the false 
part we are playing. I say by the false part 
we play, for whenever we disobey our con- 



THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 83 

science in order to please men then we play a 
false part. For to please men we pretend 
and appear to be and do w T hat they love. 
Now, if this be what our conscience tells us is 
wrong, then we know that we are really doing 
wrong to those whom we pretend to be loving 
and serving. We know that we are doing 
that which they are simple enough to believe 
is out of pure love or integrity of heart, but 
which we, on the contrary, know comes from 
mere love for ourselves, the entire disregard 
of their good, and the worst perversion of 
reason, which is cunning. But there is also a 
way of pleasing others and doing them kind 
deeds which conscience approves, and this is 
real charity, real honesty. For then that 
which appears in our deeds, and which men 
love us for, is the same as that which is in our 
hearts, and which God sees and approves. 
And this is to do to others as we would that 
others should do to us ; this is to be perfect, 
even as our Father in heaven is perfect. 



1 84 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 

Having learned this very needful lesson 
from the literal narrative, let us look deeper 
into its spiritual meaning, and see what par- 
ticular experience or duty of the religious life 
is here described under the figure of David 
being chosen king. 

Since all the personages here represent 
things of the mind, the choice of a king evi- 
dently symbolizes the selection of some prin- 
ciple in the mind to which we will subject 
ourselves, the elevation and consecration of 
something in the heart to bear rule over all 
our inw r ard and outward life. 

There is in each of us some affection, dispo- 
sition, or some general motive which rules 
over our whole life. Generally speaking, we 
are all ruled over either by love to God and 
the neighbor, or by the love of self and the 
world ; and under this general ruler there are 
many subordinate rulers : such as the love we 
have for our various pursuits in life ; the love 
of wealth or fame or applause, or of sensual 



THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 85 

things ; love of friends and kindred. All 
these latter affections may be made to serve 
and promote either the one or the other general 
or supreme love. But our hearts are not con- 
trolled directly by our love or affection for a 
thing, but always by means of a certain power, 
which we call the truth. This comprises all 
things of thought and of the intellect. The 
heart rules by means of our thoughts, our 
reasonings, our conclusions. And when we 
set up over our life any fixed rule of think- 
ing, judging, reasoning, and planning, this 
we call our principle, be it religious, moral, or 
civil. We say a man is a man of principle 
not because he has such and such affections or 
motives, but because he has chosen his king ; 
he has established a certain fixed rule of judg- 
ing and determining how to act. He has a 
principle to refer to, — that is, some fixed stand- 
ard of the truth as he regards it, by which to 
judge of the right or wrong of things. Now, 
the great true principle for a religious man is 

16* 



1 86 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 

the principle of the Divine Truth revealed in 
God's Word and taught in the Church. And 
a man subjects himself to this principle when 
he is a man of faith, when he is truly a be- 
lieving Christian. 

The very word Principle is almost the same 
as Prince, and means much the same thing. 
Therefore we can easily see how it is that the 
choice of David to be a prince or king over 
Israel is really, when spiritually understood, 
the same as the choice of the Truth to be our 
King, or the ruling Principle in the spiritual 
Israel, of our inner man. 

In obeying the truth we are obeying God as 
our King, and because David represents the 
Divine Truth, therefore, frequently in the 
Scriptures, he represents the Lord; and when 
our Saviour comes into the world as the Truth 
or Word, it is with the declaration, " I am the 
Root and offspring of David, the bright and 
morning star." 

An examination of our subject will give us 



THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 87 

much light as to how men are to recognize or 
know the Divine Truth, and how they are to 
select the right and not the wrong kind of 
principle to rule over their life's conduct. Let 
the reader follow for a moment the events as 
narrated. We find Samuel at the outset in 
danger of making an improper choice, and just 
so are we ourselves. For everything in our 
present and our eternal life depends upon 
what kind of a king we choose to govern our 
thoughts and our acts. But this choice is left 
wholly to ourselves to make when we come to 
the age of discretion and see passing in re- 
view before us the various candidates for 
our adoption. How often is our mistake just 
that which Samuel made when he saw Eliab, 
Jesse's first son, pass before him ! He looked 
on his stature and his countenance, and, with- 
out inquiring further or seeking to learn any- 
thing of the heart, or actual quality of the man, 
said, " Surely the Lord's anointed is before 
me." Such is our judgment of the motives or 



1 88 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 

principles which present themselves to our 
natural hearts for our adoption. We behold 
the stature and the countenance, the outward 
appearance, and if these be imposing and 
pleasing, we exclaim readily, in our enthusiasm, 
" Behold the anointed of the Lord." We look 
for that which is imposing and conspicuous,, 
which will make a sensation and attract atten- 
tion. We are pleased with that which is new; 
we w r elcome the first-comer ; we will do this or 
that thing just because no one ever did it be- 
fore us. Or else, to take a deeper view, we 
are delighted at the intellectual grandeur of a 
system of doctrine ; the form and stature, the 
outward appearance of the system of religious 
belief we adopt is, we think, such as the world 
will admire, and we admire ourselves in it ; we 
think, too, that because as a system of truth it 
is so complete and entirely convincing to the 
reason, that therefore it will, without doubt, 
of itself make right the heart and the life. 
We think that merely believing such a doc- 



THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 89 

trine, merely recognizing such principles as 
ours, merely choosing such a Prince, is the 
very salvation itself of our souls. Whereas, 
on the other hand, we have little taste for what 
is old and commonplace, what others have 
tried before us, what is neither noisy nor con- 
spicuous, nor in any way calculated to reflect 
any splendor upon ourselves. Deeper still, 
we ask not ourselves what effect will this or 
that principle of conduct, or this or that re- 
ligious doctrine, have on my heart and thus on 
my life, but rather what will men think of it, 
and what will they think of my judgment and 
my morality if I adopt it. In a word, in select- 
ing a principle to rule over us, it may be the 
Divine Truth, the Decalogue itself, — we are 
inclined to make the most important consider- 
ation that of intellectual belief and outward 
profession, and to forget almost wholly that 
power which they are to have over the heart 
and life for good, and which makes them 
to be truly the anointed of the Lord. And 



190 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 

many there are in this day who, in their zeal 
for a new and imposing Prince over the uni- 
verse of mind, 'do not hesitate to ridicule the 
old and venerated instrumentalities of faith, of 
piety, and of religion, — of those things, in a 
word, which engage the heart of man. They 
declare that henceforth pure Reason or Positive 
Science, or a perfect system of Social Econ- 
omy, — some scheme at least of man's devising 
which shall dispense with Divine Revelation 
altogether, — that these are in the future to 
take the place of religion and the Church. 
How many a vain and pernicious system of 
Philosophy and Morals is paraded in this cen- 
tury, like a tall and handsome Eliab, before 
the wondering eyes of a world craving the ex- 
citement of some new thing ! How many on 
hearing of this or that new project for the en- 
lightenment and advancement of the world, 
caught by the glitter of some intellectual 
sophistry which hides the corrupt and demor- 
alizing spiritual tendency hidden beneath, are 



THE- LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 191 

ready to cry out, "Surely the Lord's anointed 
is here !" Have we not seen one relieious 
sect after another spring up with its enthusi- 
astic throng, gathering numbers rapidly for a 
time, and crying out to all passers-by, " Be- 
hold, the Lord's anointed is here ;" and 
yet learning by sad experience that to re- 
generate a man, to make him from being 
natural and self-loving to be spiritual and 
truly charitable, something more is needed 
than the adoption and profession of any sys- 
tem of faith and doctrine, be it ever so true 
and ever so enlightened. " Man looketh on 
the outward appearance : the Lord looketh on 
the heart." And when Samuel so judged, lo ! 
all the seven sons passed by and yet none was 
chosen. 

And then did they send for that one, the 
youngest, who was tending the sheep ; for him 
whose thoughts were not on ruling over men, 
and making a fair appearance. And David 
was brought in, and in the presence of his 



192 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 

brethren he was anointed the chosen of the 
Lord. 

David tending the sheep is the truth which 
guards the innocent and holy affections of the 
heart from corruption and violence. To such 
remains of holy truth stored up in the mind 
by God's gracious providence must we all 
come for that which He has anointed to rule 
over and save us. Whatever principle of con- 
duct, whatever doctrine of faith, is present for 
our adoption or our confidence, this must be 
the main and only consideration which shall 
determine our submission to it : does it guard, 
preserve, and nourish those affections which 
are innocent, which are of disinterested love 
to our neighbors, and of reverence and sub- 
missive love to the Lord ? It is only the shep- 
herd-boy who can receive the Lord's anointing. 

In choosing such for a king over us we shall 
find this truth to be more and more the re- 
cipient of the Divine goodness. Our hearts 
will by means of such truth become anointed 



THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAWS. 193 

with the holy oil of the Divine love. From 

the obscure and retired place in the mind 

where, half ignored and forgotten, the holy 

precepts of faith still kept watch over some 

heaven-implanted affections of what is good 

and true, these same precepts are to be 

brought forth and elevated into their proper 

position of authority, and rule over all the 

thoughts, affections, and acts of our life. He 

who looketh on the heart will abundantly bless 

those who from the heart have chosen the 

Word of God to be their Ruler, and this not 

because they are convinced of its truth merely, 

nor because to believe it and profess it is the 

way of the world and what men approve, but 

rather because it and it alone can teach them 

how to cleanse their lives from sin, and how 

to keep themselves unspotted from the world. 

Such is the meaning of David being called 

from the sheep-folds and the tending of flocks 

to be anointed in the midst of his brethren 

and made kino- over Israel. 

I 17 



2CI. 



She g^rmcrv-trenuv mjx&t Stefp-ptxgtf ; av t the ^ivittje 
Svuth pratectttt0 against tfvil £i>irit#. 



upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his 
hand : so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the 
evil spirit departed from him. — I. Sam. xvi. 23. 



A SCENE in the court of ancient Israel, 
of that kingdom which was established in 
the world, and whose history is written in the 
pages of sacred Scripture, that it might be 
the representative of a kingdom which is not 
of this world, — the kingdom of the spiritual 
Israel, the kingdom of the Church of the Lord. 
In this beautiful narrative of the troubled 
king sending for the young man, recently from 
the sheep-folds, to come and play the harp in 
his presence, so to bring quiet and rest to his 
194 



THE ARMOR-BEARER. 1 95 

soul, we see depicted a hidden experience of 
many a Christian heart, which seldom finds its 
expression in words, except in that wonderful 
Book which alone reveals to the soul its own 
secrets. 

David is comforting King Saul, playing the 
harp in his presence, and driving away the 
troublesome spirit of evil 

Who and what are these persons, that the 
Word of God, given for the instruction and 
edification of our souls, should tell us so mi- 
nutely about them ? 

All kings, representing as they do the gov- 
erning wisdom and power, stand for the Truth, 
or the Law by which all things are to be or- 
dered, and the stability and welfare of all main- 
tained. The Lord, the one true and eternal 
King, because He is the Truth itself, and there- 
fore the Law itself; by his wisdom He gov- 
erns the world : and all power in heaven and 
earth belongs to Him also. Therefore all kings 
mentioned in the Scriptures are typical of the 



196 THE ARMOR-BEARER 

Lord as to his Divine Truth. And the Lord 
is King and is called a King, and represented 
by the kings mentioned in the Scriptures on 
account of his being the Truth itself; for by 
his Truth, which proceeds from and is the 
form of his Goodness, the Lord rules the 
world. Therefore it is that to Pilate's ques- 
tion, Art thou a King, then ? our Lord replied, 
Thou sayest that I am a King. To this end 
was I born, and for this cause came I into 
the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth. 

It is a turning-point in the history of Saul 
and of David at which occurs the incident 
before us. 

It is as truly a picture of what afterwards 
took place in the Humanity of our Lord, when 
He as the Truth and as the King stooped to 
earth and to our corrupt nature, and in Him- 
self made that nature Divine by making the 
Truth to reign in it, and so bringing it into 
harmony with his infinite Divine Goodness. 



MADE HARP-PLAYER. 1 97 

Hitherto is Israel divided from Judah. Saul 
is king over Israel, but Judah is in the hands 
of the Philistines. 

The king chosen of God, called from the 
sheep-folds, anointed by the prophet Samuel 
with the holy oil, to be the successor of Saul, 
to subdue the Philistines, and to unite the two 
kingdoms in one is the youthful David, the 
son of Jesse the Bethlehemite. 

And because thus chosen and called away 
from the sheep-folds of Bethlehem to receive 
the holy anointed oil, to be king in place of 
Saul, and to unite Israel and Judah into one 
glorious kingdom, whose citadel should be at 
Jerusalem, whose Temple and King's house is 
Zion, therefore does David pre-eminently rep- 
resent the Lord Jesus Christ, and his career 
is the great prophecy which in symbolic lan- 
guage describes the growth and the glory 
of the reign of the Messiah. Therefore is 
David so frequently mentioned in the Psalms 
and the Prophets when the great King of 

17* 



198 THE ARMOR-BEARER 

heaven — the Lord in his Divine Truth — is 
meant ; therefore also is our Lord in the gos- 
pel called the son of David, and his spiritual 
kingdom called the kingdom of our father 
David. For, as remarked above, David, his 
calling and anointing, and his ruling over the 
united kingdoms, Israel and Judah, represents 
the Truth in the Divine Humanity of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

When our Lord came to earth, He came as 
God to put on the nature of man, that He thus 
might come to men to rescue and redeem 
them. He could come to us only by becoming 
as we were ; He could become as we were not 
by a change in his own Divine nature, for as 
God He cannot change, but by making our 
nature more like to Himself, and thus enabling 
us to draw nearer to Him. He came in his 
own Divine Unity and Perfectness as the one 
only Good and the only Truth. But by his 
Truth He entered into our flesh and nature, 
and so illumined it and purged it of evil that 



MADE HARP-PLAYER. 1 99 

then his Divine Good could also flow into it, 
and thus humanity be restored once more to 
that Divine Image in which it was created. 
Because the Lord entered into our human 
nature to drive out the devils that held it in 
bondage, and to wash out its stains by means 
of the Truth which is his own eternal Word 
and Wisdom, therefore it is said that the Word 
— that is, the Truth — was made flesh, and hence 
our Lord is called the Incarnate Word. By 
this is not meant that the Lord as to his 
Love and Goodness, which is the Father, did 
not also, as well as the Divine Word or Truth, 
come to inhabit and glorify that humanity 
which is the Son, but that first the Truth puri- 
fied and rendered worthy the human nature 
as its dwelling-place and tabernacle, and that 
then came the Divine Good to dwell in it. 
For when the Lord, as the Word or the Son, 
had purified his human nature through his 
victories over all the evils common to man- 
kind and inherited from the Virgin Mary, then 



200 THE ARMOR-BEARER 

the Father, which is the Divine Good, dwelt in 
Him and was one with Him. 

First, then, was to be established the king- 
dom of Truth before, in the whole mind, love 
could reign. First must the truth, finding a 
foothold in the memory, the understanding, 
and the belief of a man, do its cleansing work 
in driving out the enemy, in discovering and 
overcoming- the errors and the evils of life. 
Then comes the reign of love and goodness, 
when the regenerated will has the control, 
and the two kingdoms of the intellect and the 
heart — of the belief and the affections, of 
knowledge and of inclination — are no longer 
divided, but are united in one under the peace- 
ful sway of " the Law that is written in the 
heart."- This is the reign of David over Israel 
and Judah in the holy city Zion. It is the reign 
of the glorified Lord Jesus, in whom Goodness 
and Truth, the Father and Son, are forever 
united, and who is " the one King over all the 
earth, the one Lord, whose name is One." 



MADE HARP-PLAYER. 201 

Israel and Judah are the two kingdoms of 
the Holy Land, which under Saul were sepa- 
rated and at war, under David were united 
and at peace. They represent the two king- 
doms in every mind, which by nature and in- 
herited evil are divided, and which by regener- 
ation of the Holy Spirit become more and 
more united and reconciled, — the kingdoms of 
the intellect and the will. 

Saul lived in troublous times. He was 
king over the Israelites, but Judah was in the 
hands of the Philistines. He represents the 
Truth ruling in the intellect, in the beliefs and 
opinions of a man, while yet his heart is in- 
vaded by w T icked affections. The Truth should 
not only be believed in the intellect, but it 
should be loved also in the will. But Saul, the 
king, was never to rule over the two king- 
doms ; and why ? 

Because Saul, when the Lord sent him out 
to battle with Agag, the heathen king, instead 
of destroying his enemy and his spoil, saved 



202 THE ARMOR-BEARER 

the best part of the spoil and spared the 
life of Agag. Therefore said the Lord's 
prophet to Saul, "Thou hast rejected the 
Word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected 
thee from being king over Israel." Saul 
saved the best part of the enemy's sheep and 
oxen, instead of destroying all, as the Lord 
had commanded. So does the man who, 
knowing the truths and the duties of religion, 
uses them only partially in destroying the 
enemy of his soul, condemning and regulating 
only the lesser faults of his life, and still cher- 
ishing to himself his greater and his dearer 
evils. When the truth is thus false to its 
stern, heaven-given mission, it becomes the 
unworthy, the rejected king. It holds the 
intellect in its power for awhile, but it 
can never reform the will, wherein the real 
evils of a man's life are rooted, because it 
spares what the Lord commands it to utterly 
root out and destroy. For a time the truth, 
thus false to its work, thus putting on the 



MADE HARP-PLAYER. 203 

semblance of faith, but void of charity and the 
real religion of life, may seem to be the prin- 
ciple of a man's belief and opinions ; but at 
length it is turned into cunning falsities, hy- 
pocrisy, and craft. Like Saul, it not only fails 
to unite the two kingdoms in one, but it loses 
its power over its own. Truth without good- 
ness, faith without charity, becomes the rejected 
king. There must be a successor, who will 
be the truth-believer from the love of good- 
ness, or faith warmed and quickened with 
charity of life. So Saul must yield the king- 
dom to David. And Saul, representing the 
truth actuated and employed from selfish aims, 
ceases now to represent the Lord ; whereas 
David, as the Truth ruling from the love of 
Good, becomes the true representative of Him. 
Therefore is the Lord called the Son, the 
Heir of David ; and the throne and kingdom 
of David are frequently mentioned when the 
spiritual and eternal kingdom of the Lord is 
meant. Truth loved and believed, not simply 



204 THE ARMOR-BEARER 

as intellectual stimulus, but as the law, the 
form, the moulding principle of the will and 
its affections, — such truth will battle manfully 
with the Philistines, will conquer the holy land 
of the affections from the hold of the wicked 
and idolatrous lusts, and will bring the heart 
and the mind, the affections and the beliefs, 
of a man into a harmonious subjection to the 
Divine Truth, as the Law of God's goodness, 
and will own as its King, the eternal Word, 
the very Messiah or Anointed One whom 
David typified, — Jesus Christ, the Lord. 

Saul is the truth separated from the good 
of life, ruling for a time in the intellect of man. 
David, his successor, is the Truth believed in 
from love, obeyed in the will and its affections, 
and thus set up as king over the whole domain 
of the soul. David was called from the sheep- 
folds to be anointed king in place of the false, 
the hypocritical, the unworthy Saul For so 
does the Truth, which shall save us, occupy 
itself in guarding the holy and innocent affec- 



MADE HARP-PLAYER. 205 

tions of good, represented by the sheep of Jesse 
the Bethlehemite ; and out of the remains of 
heavenly affection implanted by the Lord in 
every soul during infancy and childhood comes 
forth the desire to believe, the willingness to 
learn, to understand, and to obey the law of 
truth which God reveals. Thus from some in- 
nocent affections of the will, enlivened by God's 
Holy Spirit, as by his call of the prophet, even 
while the heart is still held in the bonds of 
sin and death, comes that germ of faith, that 
young but mighty principle of heaven-born 
truth, — David the beautiful youth, the valiant 
warrior, the anointed king of both Israel and 
Judah. He is the faith which shall struggle 
with all the sins of self-love and spare none, 
and which rules finally in heavenly and peace- 
ful sway over the undivided kingdom of the 
soul. 

How often do men find themselves in the 
condition of the melancholy and troubled 
King Saul! — possessed of the mighty weapons 

18 



206 THE ARMOR-BEARER 

of truth, and all the valiant equipments of 
reason, learning, and argument ; well taught 
in God's Word ; knowing well their duty, and 
knowing well their sins and the strength of 
their foes ; and yet, from faint-heartedness, 
fearing to struggle with them; even in time of 
temptation and actual combat, only half resist- 
ing, only half conquering ; that is, thinking it 
very wrong, but yielding nevertheless in act ; 
condemning the whole host as from hell, and 
yet saving to themselves Agag the chief evil 
of all, and the choicest of his sheep and oxen ! 
How should we not be troubled like King 
Saul in such a time ? And how could it be 
otherwise than that the evil spirits will draw 
near to us and torment us, entering into the 
evil affections which we still secretly cherish, 
and there striving for dominion in our heart 
and making our conscience and our sense of 
duty and our faith only troublesome and an- 
noying to us ? How often are our minds thus 
divided and disturbed ! and how often does the 



MADE HARP-PLAYER, 20J 

Lord permit the evil spirits from hell to draw 
near and rouse this inward unrest, in order to 
teach us that true rest and peace is to be 
found not in a house divided against itself, 
but in the holy Zion, the kingdom of the good 
King and Lord, where not Israel alone, but 
Judah also, not the intellect only, but the 
heart as well, is obedient to the one Law of 
Truth and Goodness, — the rule and kingdom 
of Jesus Christ! 

Well will it be for thee, reader, if in such 
states thou dost as did King Saul. For he 
made David to be his armor-bearer, and he 
called him before him. And when the evil 
spirit from God was upon Saul, David took 
an harp and played with his hand : so Saul 
was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit 
departed from him. And so make David, the 
truth believed from the desire of goodness, 
thy armor-bearer; let thy knowledge and be- 
lief of true doctrine, which is the soul's armor 
and weapon, let this be animated and sup- 



208 THE ARMOR-BEARER 

ported and carried into action by the desire to 
be better, to conquer evils, to bring the whole 
mind into subjection to God's kingdom ; and 
then, when thou art troubled in soul and 
vexed by the presence and the insinuating 
spell of evil spirits, call to thee this youthful 
David, this harp-player, this heaven-anointed 
truth of good, this fearless, this calm and 
peace-bringing faith of charity. Pray to God 
that the innocent and holy affections of good 
may be revived in thee, that so all holy truth 
and doctrine may be valiant in driving away 
the evil counsel and the anxious forebodings 
and doubts which invade thy peace. Recall 
some wholesome truth of practical duty and 
use, and strive, with the Lord's help, to per- 
form it ; and, if it be at first coldly, unwill- 
ingly, still pray that the Lord make thee 
willing ; that He give thee the love of per- 
forming it ; that He send into thy heart the 
heavenly delight of doing his holy law. And 
this He will surely do. For his yoke is easy, 



MADE HARP-PLAYER. 209 

and his burden is light. And David, who 
was a valiant warrior and bore the armor 
of the king into battle, also knew how to play 
the harp so sweetly that the king's troubled 
soul was at peace and the evil spirit departed 
from him. So indeed shall every holy truth 
which we faithfully use in battling off and de- 
stroying the evils of our life come to us in 
our troubled moments freighted with heavenly 
comfort. It shall bring with it sometimes the 
harp, as w r ell as the implements of war. The 
holy states of innocence, the good affections, the 
peaceful thoughts awakened in us by the truth 
thus present in our minds as the ruling prin- 
ciple of our lives, will be to us, sometimes, as 
a strain of unutterable music floating down 
from the depths of heaven, where the hand of 
Him whom David only typified strikes a harp 
of celestial harmonies. 



18* 



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And he said. Peace be to you, fear not : your God, and the 
God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks : 
I had your money. And he brought Simeon out unto 
them. — Gen. xliii. 23. 

THESE words occur in the story of Joseph. 
To understand something of their spir- 
itual meaning it is necessary that we first see 
their connection with that interesting narrative. 
The leading facts of this story are easily re- 
called to mind : how that having been sold by 
his brethren and carried down into Egypt, 
Joseph was there after a time exalted by Pha- 
raoh to be ruler over the whole land ; how that 
he stored up corn in great abundance, so that 
when at length a famine prevailed the people 
of all the countries round about were obliged 

to come to him to buy corn ; how at length 

210 



THE MONEY IN THE SACK. 211 

even his brethren, the sons of Israel, or 
Jacob, came down also to buy corn, and how 
they were treated kindly by Joseph, who knew 
them but did not make himself known to them, 
and how, on returning with their corn, they 
found their money returned to them, each man 
his money in his sack. Then they go down a 
second time for more corn, and this time take 
back with them their younger brother, Ben- 
jamin, whom they had not taken before, and 
whom Joseph had commanded them to bring. 

And now arriving in Egypt, they are brought 
to Joseph's house, and they begin to fear on 
account of the money which they have found 
in their sacks ; for they think they have been 
suspected of not having paid for their corn, 
and that therefore they are now to be taken 
captive and made bondmen to the ruler of 
Egypt. So when they come to the door of 
Joseph's house they say to the steward, " In- 
deed, sir, we came down the first time to buy 
food : and it came to pass, when we came to 



212 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 

the inn, that we opened our sacks, and, behold, 
every man's money was in the mouth of his 
sack, our money in full weight: and we have 
brought it ao-ain in our hand. And other 
money have we brought down in our hands to 
buy food: we cannot tell who put our money 
in our sacks/' And the steward answers them 
in these words : " Peace be to you, fear not : 
your God, the God of your father, hath given 
you treasure in your sacks : I had your money." 
Now, this story describes in its spiritual 
meaning the experience of every religious 
man, — that is, of every man who believes in 
the truth which God has revealed, and is try- 
ing in some degree to obey it, and thus to re- 
form his life. The truth itself, — that which 
makes up the substance of our faith, — this is 
what is described by the silver, or the money 
which the brethren of Joseph brought with 
them wherewith to buy corn ; and the corn of 
which they w T ere in need represents the bread 
of the soul, that which sustains our spiritual 



HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 213 

life, namely, good affections, or the will to do 
that which the truth teaches. 

The instruction we derive from this narra- 
tive, as spiritually viewed, is, then, something 
concerning the use we are to make of the 
truth. How is the truth we know going to 
procure for us that goodness of heart of which 
we are in need, — without which, indeed, the soul 
will die of famine ? The answer is a brief one : 
we must give up bare truth, or the knowledge 
of what is right, in exchange for the desire 
and will of doing it, of acting it, of living by it. 
By giving up the truth, like so much money 
given in exchange for the corn, is not meant 
to abandon it or to depart from it, and to cease 
to believe in it, but it is meant to give it up as 
our own, to cease to believe in it, or to obey it 
as coming from man, and not from God. We 
give back the truth to Him who first gave 
it us ; we bring back the money found in 
our sacks when we submit ourselves to the 
authority of the truth as to God's authority ; 



214 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 

when we obey the truth, no longer because 
it is ours, but because it is God's. 

This is what is meant by the sons of Jacob 
bringing back their money with them into 
Egypt when they came the second time to 
buy corn. And, therefore, it will be observed, 
their experience resembles that of any, at any 
time, who have tried to do this thing spiritu- 
ally. They are brought to Joseph's house, and 
there they begin to be anxious and afraid, and 
to think that some great loss and misery is to 
befall them. They begin to fear lest, on ac- 
count of that money which was found in their 
sacks, Joseph will seek occasion against them, 
and will fall upon them and take them for 
bondmen and their beasts with them. For 
when a man has been taught the truths of 
Christian doctrine, — that he must obey God, 
must keep the commandments, must examine 
himself and find out what are his besetting sins, 
and give himself no rest until he has resisted 
and conquered them; that he must act from 



HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 21 5 

spiritual and not from natural motives ; that 
he must be willing to suffer persecution and 
worldly adversities rather than to disobey the 
voice of his conscience, which is the holy Spirit 
of God dwelling in him, — when a man, I say, 
has been taught these things, and, moved by 
the Divine Mercy and Grace, has begun to 
think of putting them to practice and reso- 
lutely set his face toward heaven and the Lord, 
in the desire to do that which is needful to save 
his soul, what is his first experience in this 
new casting about for spiritual life, for the 
food of his immortal nature? He knows that 
life means something more than mere eating 
and drinking and clothing the body, and that 
at the best this corporeal and earthly life is 
only a thing of a few years' duration. Chris- 
tian doctrine tells him that his soul is to live 
forever ; that after death there is eternal life ; 
that beyond the grave there is an eternal 
world ; that there is heaven and there is hell ; 
that to one of these abodes the soul must go ; 



2l6 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 

and that he is himself responsible as to which 
it shall be. He knows, too, that God holds 
him to strict account for the deeds of this life, 
— not in any caprice or merciless power, but 
because of the laws of his own Divine Order, 
and of man's existence, which require that 
man, in order to live, must act in freedom, and 
that as his acts are good or evil, pure or im- 
pure, truthful or untruthful, such must his 
whole nature become ; and such as it has be- 
come in this world, such must it remain to 
eternity. 

Now, all these truths, when not only well 
learned and remembered, but when grounded 
a little in the heart and become really the belief 
of a man's mind, begin then to exercise a kind of 
compulsion over the outward life and the nat- 
ural thoughts and inclinations, which compul- 
sion is in nowise agreeable or welcome. These 
stern and solemn truths of God's Word are a 
little too much believed in to be hastily dis- 
missed the mind ; for they have led us on a 



HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 217 

little way toward reforming our life, and so far 
they have struck their roots down into the heart, 
and begun to work a change in our inner affec- 
tions, to form a new will within us. So, even 
if we should determine in some evil moment 
of temptation to cast off at one stroke all 
these sacred and warning thoughts within us, 
we find that even this is not so easily done ! 
In a word, the truth we know has sent us on 
its mission ; it has compelled us to go out and 
procure some actual good, some real charity, 
and purity of life. We are sent down to the 
land of plenty to buy corn for our hungering 
souls ; we are brought by compulsion to the 
door of Joseph's house. We are come into 
that state of life when our external man is 
ready to be united with the internal man ; 
when we are, in some degree, ready to let 
the interior affections of truth and goodness 
come down into and control the deeds of 
our life in the world. And here at the very 
door of this conjunction, — just here where the 

k 19 



2l8 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 

question arises as to which is better, to let 
the world and the body — the natural man, in a 
word — have dominion, or the spiritual man 
within, with its holy precepts of religion and 
of eternal life, — here is where the first real 
anxiety and difficulty arises. We think of the 
money in our sack which is not ours, which 
does not belong to us, and which is now per- 
haps only going to be the means of our losing 
our own liberty and all that belongs to us. 
We shrink back with a kind of dread from 
that power and authority which we see that the 
truth and religion must have over us, if we 
acknowledge it to be Divine! We see that if 
the truth is not ours, not the dictate of our 
own will, but of a higher Will, to which ours 
must be submitted, then we have nothing left 
that we can call our own. This internal, spir- 
itual nature will have entire authority or none! 
Everything of selfish and of worldly love must 
be given up. We have to deny ourselves, 
to substitute for our human preference the 



HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 219 

direction of God's revealed command, and to 
have no wishes, no delights, no attachments, 
no hopes of our own, but only wait for God to 
send us that pure affection for what is true and 
good,*\vhich the angels have. 

This is the prospect of the religious life, which 
will present itself at the outset of our efforts 
after goodness, and which, at the door of 
Joseph's house, will send anxiety and dread 
into our hearts. "It is all," we say, "to be 
laid to that silver which was given to us as 
a free gift. Yea, all this comes of those 
Divine, those holy truths which have sunk 
down into our memories and hearts, and which 
we cannot root out now if we would. There 
they remain warning us, counseling us, direct- 
ing us, bidding us seek the true way of life, 
pointing unmistakably at our more secret evils, 
and allowing no peace to our wounded con- 
sciences. If they were truths of our invent- 
ing, things that we had constructed out of our 
own fancies and imagination to as easily over- 



220 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 

turn again and forget; if it, indeed, were our 
own money, then it would be otherwise, — then, 
indeed, had we perhaps never set out on this 
search after the bread of life. But, as it is, 
the truth has not only shown us the way to 
satisfying our souls' need, but compels us by 
a kind of silent authority of its own to go seek 
this food, and even at the risk, as we at length 
discover, of our natural freedom and all that 
the selfish heart holds dear. ,, 

Thus does religion put on at the outset a 
certain dreary and dreaded aspect ; such for a 
time seems the spiritual life when viewed from 
the position of mere natural affection and 
worldly wisdom. But this being the appear- 
ance only, how is it with the facts of the case ? 
Do we really lose our freedom when we sub- 
mit ourselves to the law of Divine truth ? Do 
we really lose our happiness, the best things 
of heart and life, when we make our natural 
man subordinate to the spiritual ? How was it 
with Joseph's brethren ? Did Joseph, then, fall 



HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 221 

upon them and take them captive and treat 
them harshly ? Far otherwise : he gave them 
corn and made them come in to the feast he 
had prepared for them, and made himself 
known to them as their own brother. And 
in reality we find in our experience that in- 
stead of losing our freedom and our happi- 
ness, the only way to preserve it is to obey the 
truth, not as our own but as God's, and to let 
the faith of the internal man be the ruler of 
our outward life. 

For, even thus far, in obeying the truth, in 
doing whatever single act of repentance, have 
we not acted freely ? I have said above 
that the will compels us ; that it brings us to 
Joseph's door and there threatens to make us 
captive. We have perhaps been driven, in 
obeying the commandment, by fear of punish- 
ment hereafter, by fear of losing heaven, and 
this fear has thus in some degree compelled us. 
But, still, when it has come to a matter of 
acting in any particular crisis ; when a tempta- 

19* 



222 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 

tion to do wrong has come in our way, and 
we have resolutely resisted and overcome it, 
where was the compulsion in that instance? 
Hard as the struggle was, have we not volun- 
tarily chosen our part ? Did it not lie before 
us to do this way or that, precisely as we of 
ourselves determined ? This is certainty the 
experience of every one w T ho has ever resisted 
temptation. No man in temptation feels him- 
self to be a machine, a mere unthinking tool, 
to be handled by another's will and intention 
than his own. He knows that his own will 
and intention is what alone will determine his 
action. So I say a man acts freely in thus 
obeying the truth, in thus making the truth 
to be law over him. Our Lord says, u Ye 
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
you free." 

And how as it regards happiness? Will our 
submission to God's law as over against the 
law of our selfish and sinful hearts render us 
happy? In the end it will, for this is the very 



HO IV THE TRUTH MAKES FREE. 223 

kingdom of heaven which we all pray for. But 
even in this world where there is almost a con- 
stant combat between truth and error, where the 
evils of others are always adding to the misery 
caused by our own, — even in this world, I 
doubt if there be anything that gives the soul 
such a sweet, refreshing draught of pure happi- 
ness as the consciousness of having resisted an 
evil, having overcome a temptation by our own 
free, resolute choosing to obey the command- 
ment of God. 

And so it proves, in the result, that the life 
of religion is the freest life we can lead, and 
the happiest. We cannot but feel in every step 
we take forward in spiritual life that we have 
become just so much more free, and have been 
real gainers, not losers, of all that is worth 
possessing. We find the more we strive to 
obey God's truth as. Divine and not our own, 
just so much the more do we seem to act of 
ourselves, yea, as if it were our own ; for the 
truth seems to be ever more and more in ac- 



224 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 

cord with our own will, — not with our depraved, 
carnal, and selfish will ; against this, indeed, 
ever clashing with this, and showing up its 
enormities, but ever more and more in accord 
with that new will which, by the grace of God, 
has been secretly and gradually forming in 
our inner man. 

The freest beings in the universe are the 
highest angels of heaven, whose only will it is 
to do God's will ; yet it is their will, their willing- 
ness, their desire to do God's will, and hence 
they do it in the fullest delight of heart. They 
do it feeling conscious that they act from their 
own will, not from compulsion, not as a lifeless 
machine. The truth of God is become their 
faith, it is their truth, because they have con- 
firmed it in their life, and because they love it 
in their hearts; and yet they know it always to 
be God's truth, and as such they love to do it. 

And it will be the experience of every man, 
that the more he attains to real goodness of 
life the more he will seem to act freely as of 



HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 225 

himself, untrammeled by any outward influ- 
ences or circumstances. And this is illustrated 
by what we further read in our story, that 
Joseph's brethren said, " We have come again 
to buy food, and other money we have brought 
wherewith to buy it." That is, they do not ask 
now the corn in return for that money which 
they found returned to them in their sacks, but 
for that other money which is their own. And 
the steward seeing that they both acknowledge 
the money given them, and at the same time 
are willing to pay other money which is their 
own for their food, bids them fear not, for God 
had given them their money in their sacks, 
and, moreover, their money had come to him. 
He recognizes their willingness to pay for 
their food, and at the same time tells them 
that God has restored to them the same that 
they gave. And this is the whole lesson : that 
if we will give up our nahiral freedom to God, 
He will give us back spiritual freedom, and zvith 
this, natural freedom, too. If we obey the Di- 

K* 



226 THE MONEY IN THE SACK. 

vine truth in opposition to our sinful will, God 
will enable us to obey it afterwards willingly, 
as our own and because we love it and take 
delight in doing it. In a word, the whole story 
goes to confirm that great doctrine of the 
Church, that we must Shun evil, because it is of 
the devil and from the devil; and we must do good 
because it is of God and from God; and that in 
thus doing the truth we must act freely of our 
own choice and from our own hearts ; but at the 
same time acknowledging and believing that all 
our will, understanding, and power to do this is 
in us and through us from the Lord alone. 



THE END. 



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